Introduction

Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is a rare but life-threatening complication of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). There is a paucity of data regarding the natural history of this devastating complication of myocardial infarction in the Middle East region with restricted financial resources and unsolved major health problems.

Aim

To evaluate the clinical presentation and in-hospital outcome of patients with post-infarction VSD over a 10-year period in a tertiary center in northwest Iran.

Material and methods

Data from 64 consecutive patients with VSD complicating AMI were retrospectively analyzed from March 2005 to May 2015.

Results

The mean age of the patients was 71.62 ±9.38 years with 57.8% of them being female. The VSDs were anterior in 52 (82%) patients. More than half of patients were in cardiogenic shock during the initial presentation. Multivessel coronary artery disease was found on coronary angiography in 70.3% of patients. In-hospital mortality was 82.8%. Multivariate analysis revealed cardiogenic shock (HR = 12.5, p = 0.001) as the only independent predictor of in-hospital mortality and surgical treatment as the only predictor of in-hospital survival (HR = 0.2, p = 0.02).

Conclusions

Our study demonstrated that VSD complicating myocardial infarction had an extremely high in-hospital mortality rate. Cardiogenic shock was the only independent predictor of in-hospital mortality and surgical treatment was the only predictor of in-hospital survival.