Lithium is the drug of choice for bipolar disorder and has been in use for more than
50 years. Lithium is known to cause cardiac toxicity in humans including conduction
disturbances, bradycardia, and repolarization abnormalities but has rarely been reported
to cause left ventricular dysfunction. We report a patient with typical features of
lithium toxicity including sinus bradycardia and junctional rhythm, who, in addition,
presented atypical features with diffuse T-wave inversions, QT prolongation, and acute
left ventricular systolic dysfunction with serum cardiac marker elevation. After excluding
other causes of cardiomyopathy including coronary thrombosis, stress cardiomyopathy,
and sepsis, a highly probable explanation for our patient’s acute left ventricular
systolic dysfunction was lithium toxicity causing transient myocarditis. Extensive
review of literature showed a few case reports of cardiac dysfunction associated with
lithium, but acute left ventricular dysfunction caused by lithium has not been reported.
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: May 17, 2015
Accepted:
March 4,
2015
Received:
February 28,
2015
Footnotes
â?†Conflict of interest: none.
��Financial disclosures: none.
â?…Acknowledgements: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
