Around the early 1990s, Japanese researchers demonstrated for the first time that suffering from severe emotional or physical stress can cause a sometimes temporary, sometimes lethal heart disease called shattered heart syndrome or takotsubo cardiomyopathy .
The possible symptoms of takotsubo cardiomyopathy - dyspnea, chest pain, transient cardiac rhythm (arrhythmias), cardiogenic shock hypotension, fainting etc. - are very reminiscent of a heart attack, so often, on a first physical examination, the doctors could confuse the two morbid conditions.
However, as soon as more in-depth diagnostic tests are performed, the pathophysiological differences between the two diseases immediately emerge. Indeed:
- The electrocardiogram (ECG) of a person with broken heart syndrome produces a path that is completely different from that of an infarcted person. A cardiologist is able to immediately distinguish the two circumstances.
- Blood tests of a person with takotsubo cardiomyopathy do not have the same alterations as serum markers, which distinguish myocardial infarction.
- One or more coronary arteries of an infarcted person are restricted or occluded altogether, whereas in individuals with takotsubo cardiomyopathy they are healthy.
- The "broken heart" presents a modification of the typical and unmistakable ventricular cavity.
