What is ventricular aneurysm?
Definition Ventricular aneurysm is a complication of a heart attack (myocardial infarction). It is a ballooning of a section of a blood vessel in the heart that first appears several days or weeks after an acute myocardial infarction. Description A myocardial infarction occurs when a section of the heart wall is deprived of blood and dies (undergoes necrosis, or tissue death, and scarring). The heart wall is mainly muscle. It has two ventricles, the right and left ventricles, which pump blood to and from the lungs, and to the body. When part of the heart muscle dies, pumping power from that part of the wall is lost. After a myocardial infarction, the part of the heart wall that did not die must continue pumping blood and compensate for the dead muscle. Ventricular aneurysm is one of the complications that follow a myocardial infarction. An aneurysm is the outward swelling, or ballooning, of a blood vessel at a weak spot in the wall of the blood vessel. In the case of ventricular aneury
