Acute myocardial infarction due to septic emboli in a patient with severe pneumonia: A case report

A 77-year-old man presented with acute anterior myocardial infarction and cardiogenic shock. We successfully performed coronary angioplasty and stenting with intra-aortic balloon pumping for a proximal lesion of the left anterior descending artery, which supplied the territory of the totally occluded right coronary artery. He also had pneumonia resistant to antibiotic therapy. On the 11th day after the onset of infarction, he suffered cardiogenic shock again and died. Postmortem histological examination demonstrated multiple septic emboli with neutrophil infiltration, resulting in myocardial infarctions. There was no occlusion at the stenting site. Severe pneumonia was found in both lungs, which may have been the embolic source in this case.