Justification:

The ischemic heart disease is the main cause of death of women in Costa Rica, and its incidence has increased with the years. In spite of this, there are few clinical studies in this respect in our country.

The aim of this paper is to present the main clinical and angiographic characteristics of a group of patients with acute myocardial infarction in order to establish not only their particularities but also to allow comparisons with other populations.

Methods:

An observational, descriptive and retrospective study was carried out over a period of five years, in which patients admitted with myocardial infarction to the Intensive Care Unit were included. Demographic data, clinical evolution, complications, angiographic findings, treatment, and outcome were recorded.

Statistical analysis was quantitative and descriptive, performed with SPSS v.21 software (IBM Corp., USA) and consisted of calculations of frequency, central tendency, measures of variability, percentiles, and chi-square. The Ethical Committee of the Hospital Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia approved the research protocol (DG-3380-2020).

Results:

A total of 54 out of 190 patients were included. The average age was 60 years, with a mortality rate of 17.9%, which was 5.4% higher than in men. Most of the patients suffered from arterial hypertension (74%), 24 (44.5%) were smokers and 23 (42.5%) had diabetes mellitus.

The most frequent symptoms were chest pain, cryodiaphoresis and dyspnea. It was considered that there was atypical chest pain in 8 cases (15%). Forty-eight patients were taken for coronary angioplasty and only 35% received it in time. Pharmacological thrombolysis was applied to 17 patients, and it was successful in only 3 patients. The right coronary artery and the anterior descending artery were the vessels responsible in most cases (19 cases (39.5%) each).

Conclusión:

This population had clear ischemic symptoms, with severe coronary disease and higher mortality than men. In general, pharmacological as well as mechanical therapy was applied late.

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