Survival after left ventricular rupture following blunt chest injury.

Blunt traumatic rupture of the left ventricle of the heart is rarely diagnosed preoperatively and is usually fatal, with only a few survivors reported in the literature. This report describes a case of a 54-year-old woman who survived a left ventricular rupture from a motor vehicle accident. Her cardiac injury was not suspected because she was not hypotensive and had no signs of pericardial tamponade. She developed circulatory arrest 2 hours after her injury, during induction of anesthesia.