Correlation of electrocardiographic and pathologic findings in anteroposterior infarction

The findings in the Wilson precordial leads and in the standard and Goldberger limb leads have been analyzed and correlated with the pathologic findings in fifty-two cases of coexistent infarction of the anterior and posterior walls of the left ventricle. Autopsy revealed a recent infarct involving the apical one-third or more of the anterior wall and continuing through the septum and around the tip of the left ventricle into the apical one-third or more of the posterior wall in twenty cases, and an old healed infarct of similar distribution in sixteen cases. The pathologic findings were the result of the confluence of independent anterior and posterior infarcts in at least three of these thirty-six cases, and were attributed to simultaneous anteroposterior infarction in the other thirty-three cases because of the anatomical continuity of the lesions and the uniformity in age. Five additional cases were observed with pathologic evidence of simultaneous anteroposterior infarction, complicated by a separate posterobasal lesion. The eleven remaining cases had anatomically separate anterior and posterior lesions.