[Acute myocardial infarction in elderly subjects. Significance of risk factors and method of presenting the clinical picture in the analysis of a cohort at a coronary care unit].

Acute myocardial infarction in the elderly shows epidemiological and clinical features different from those observed in the same pathology in the young-adult subject. In this study, the authors compare literature data with their experience of 309 subjects aged greater than or equal to 65 years vs. 268 controls. All these patients were hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction in an Intensive Care Unit. Risk factors, symptomatology at onset, lesion site and survival in the Intensive Care Unit were examined. Our study establishes that cardiologists need special diagnostic accuracy to evaluate coronary artery disease in old patients.