Myocardial infarction following acute aortic dissection.

Acute aortic dissection may present a clinical picture simulating myocardial infarction, including electrocardiographic changes. The mechanism underlying this mode of presentation has not heretofore been documented during life. We present here for the first time, a patient with acute aortic dissection and the clinical picture of acute myocardial infarction, where the mechanism of infarction has been demonstrated, by preoperative angiographic studies, probably to be due to compression of the extramural portion of the right coronary artery by the false channel of the dissecting hematoma.