The patient, a fifty nine year old male, was admitted to the ward with symptoms of inferior wall myocardial infarction with ST segment elevation combined with intermittent right side sight loss. Despite typical resting stenocardial chest pain, ST segment elevation in ECG, transient symptoms of acute heart failure and slightly elevated myocardial necrosis biomarkers, coronarography did not reveal obvious source of myocardial ischemia. Moreover, echocardiography did not confirm decreased ejection fraction. However further research confirmed critical stenosis of the left internal carotid artery and chronic occlusion of the right internal carotid artery. Several questions were raised during diagnostic process including: the cause of cardiac ischemia and the cause of cerebral ischemia. Clinical data analysis and available literature allowed authors to exclude cerebral ischemia as a source of ECG ischemic changes and to establish transient myocardial ischemia causing circulatory decompensation amplified by carotid arteries atherosclerosis as the source of neurological symptoms.
Keywords: carotid atherosclerosis; coronary artery disease; myocardial infarction.