Case reportCardiac rupture by penetration of fractured sternum: a rare complication of cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Section snippets
Case
An 82-year-old male fell asleep after complaining of chest discomfort after copulation with his wife. Initially, he was breathing normally. Twenty minutes later, he began gasping, and his wife called the Emergency Service. The ambulance team arrived 10 min later and confirmed cardiac arrest. They started both chest compression and manual ventilation. His gasping disappeared just before their arrival. Unfortunately, it took 20 min to transfer the patient to our emergency center because his
Discussion
We report here a rare case of cardiac rupture with a fractured sternum during CPR.
We concluded that the patient experienced cardiac arrest with acute myocardial infarction. The cardiac rupture occurred as a result of direct penetration of the fractured sternum, because the tears on both the right atrium and the pericardial sac were underneath the pointed sternal edge. Moreover, no other cardiac rupture was observed on the surface of the heart. Cardiac rupture or pericardial hematoma related to
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Cited by (41)
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2019, Legal MedicineCitation Excerpt :The mechanism is probably a combination of direct muscular squeezing and the hydrostatic effect of suddenly increased intracardial pressure [18]. The occurrence of CPR-related cardiac rupture is associated with age, condition of the patient, duration of resuscitation, and skill of the emergency medical technicians [19]. Elderly patients and longer duration of resuscitation are more likely to cause this type of rupture.
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