A new variant of Tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy: transient mid-ventricular ballooning.

Stress cardiomyopathy is a reversible left ventricular dysfunction precipitated by emotional stress. Affected patients are generally women, whose symptoms are similar to myocardial infarction with reversible apical dyskinesis associated with hypercontractile basal segments and no evidence for hemodynamically significant coronary arterial stenoses by angiography. We report the case of an 82-year-old woman who presented with acute onset of chest pain after emotional stress and with reversible left ventricular dysfunction consisting of akinesis of the midventricular segments and hyperkinesis of the basal and apical segments.