Tag Archives: Takotsubo

Presentation A 52-year-old woman with a background of alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency and severe emphysema underwent transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) that demonstrated an apparent right atrial mass adhering to the inter-atrial septum. She was referred for transoesophageal echo (TOE) to investigate further. Additionally, she had been noted to desaturate on exercise, raising the possibility of intra-cardiac shunting. She was thus also referred for saline-bubble contrast TTE. Figure 1. Transthoracic echocardiography immediately following transoesophogeal echocardiogram. Apical four-chamber view at end-diastole demonstrating normal left ventri

Introduction Takotsubo syndrome (TS) is increasingly recognised by the medical community following its first description in five Japanese patients, mostly male, in 1990 by Sato et al.1 Dote, his colleague, named the syndrome Takotsubo in 1991 due to its characteristic left ventricle (LV) shape in systole (narrow neck and wide base) and similarity to the Japanese octopus trap (takotsubo).2 The syndrome is also termed apical ballooning syndrome, broken heart syndrome and stress cardiomyopathy, among other names. Case one: a woman born in 1947 In January 2018 she was aged 70 and had been diagnosed with hypertension in 1996, but had no other card