A 71-year-old man went into the catheterization lab for a routine-sounding problem: a badly calcified blockage in the left anterior descending artery, the vessel cardiologists sometimes call the widow maker. Hours later his chest had been opened, his artery sliced lengthwise, and a calcified core containing two stents and a broken catheter shaft lifted out in one piece.
His cardiologists in Guangxi and Guangzhou, China, describe the sequence as a trilogy of catastrophes. The case was published August 26 in the World Journal of Cardiology.
