Chronic thyrotoxic myocarditis complicated by myocardial rupture in a patient with autoimmune thyroiditis

A case of thyrotoxic myocarditis in a 60-year-old female patient is oresented. With the diagnosis of «Unstable angina» she was admitted to the intensive care unit for patients with myocardial infarction at the Yudin city clinical hospital in Moscow. Earlier, the patient had been treated with tyrosol for thyrotoxicosis, but she independently abolished the drug. She ecperienced pain in the chest for the first time in her life. Emergency, coronaroangiography was performed. No hemodynamically significant damage to the blood vessels of the heart was detected. Later, according to the outpatient blood test for thyroid hormones, a diagnosis was established — «severe thyrotoxicosis». The next day after hospitalization, treatment with tyrosol was started at a dose of 30 mg per day. Sinus tachycardia persisted. A reliable increase in cardiospecific enzymes was detected. The pain in the chest did not recur. Echocardiography did not reveal impairment of local or global myocardial contractility. On the fifth day of hospital treatment the patient suddenly died of cardiac and respiratory arrest. The autopsy study revealed autoimmune thyroiditis, thyrotoxic serous-lymphocytic myocarditis, which was complicated by a rupture of the myocardium, and pericardial gemotamponade. The difficulties of differential diagnosis of myocarditis and acute coronary syndrome and the features of treatment tactics in elderly patients with thyrotoxicosis are discussed.