Dr. Smith's ECG Blog

Instructive ECGs in Emergency Medicine Clinical Content

Associate Editors:
— Pendell Meyers & Ken Grauer (2018)
— Jesse McLaren & Emre Aslanger (2022)
— Willy Frick (2024)

editors

Coronary occlusion need not have 1 mm ST elevation; often it does not

A 53 year old male with no previous cardiac history presented with sudden substernal chest pain with tingling of bilateral arms and dyspnea.

this is the first ECG at 1559:

There is very subtle and < 1 mm ST elevation in II, III, and aVF. The T-waves in these inferior leads are much larger than normal, with almost the same voltage as the QRS, and are “fat”. These are hyperacute T waves. Just as importantly, there is minimal reciprocal ST depression in aVL, with T wave inversion. This is diagnostic for inferior STEMI, even though it doesn’t meet the arbitrary criteria of 1 mm ST elevation in 2 consecutive leads. The cath lab was activated and a distal RCA thrombus with TIMI-0 flow was seen. For technical reasons, it could not be opened. An ECG was repeated, showing the development of the inferior MI without reperfusion:

Previous Article

Anterior pseudonormalization

Next Article

Right Bundle Branch Block (RBBB) with Anterolateral STEMI

View Comments (5)
  1. It has been really helpful.Should this patient be thrombolysed if facilties for cardiac intervention are not available ?

  2. I would, because I would be very sure of the diagnosis. But you must be certain of the diagnosis in order to give fibrinolytics. But if you're not certain, you can: get serial ECGs (they will evolve if it is early occlusion) and/or get an immediate echocardiogram.

  3. On the second ECG there is some ST depression in V1-V3 and a little bit of ST elevation in V5-V6. I guess it must have been a very big RCA.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *