Echocardiographic findings in a patient with Takotsubo syndrome: importance of measurements beyond the ejection fraction

Takotsubo syndrome refers to an acute heart failure syndrome that mainly affects postmenopausal women, which is characterized by abnormalities in ventricular segmental contractility accompanied by a reduction in the ejection fraction, which is completely reversible. Although the first case of this disease was described 20 years ago, at present we only have information from observational and descriptive studies, with which in 2016 the European Society of Cardiology publishes a state of the art of this medical condition. We present the case of a 65-year-old woman who consults for chest pain with typical features with elevation of cardiac biomarkers and severe hypokinesia in all apical segments in the echocardiogram, which resolved spontaneously as evidenced in the follow-up images. We present not only the conventional measures but also the global longitudinal strain that shows a characteristic pattern in this type of patients.