This case highlights that while left main coronary artery embolisation is typically fatal, a non-occlusive embolus can result in a favourable prognosis.
Non-occlusive left main embolus may permit survival; hypothesis-generating for rare cases and should not change practice.
Coronary embolism is an uncommon cause of myocardial infarction. The usual source of a coronary embolus is an intracardiac thrombus or vegetation. Embolisation to the left main coronary artery is an extremely rare event and is usually fatal. We present a case of a 38-year-old woman with embolisation to the left main coronary artery which further embolised distally to the left anterior descending artery leading to a non-ST elevation myocardial infarction. The non-occlusive nature of the left main coronary artery embolus might have led to a favourable prognosis in our patient.
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Giri et al. (2014) studied this question.