Apical ballooning syndrome (ABS), also referred to as stress cardiomyopathy, is characterized by acute left ven-tricular dysfunction following a stressful situation. Diagnosis of ABS is made in the following scenarios: tran-sient hypokinesia or dyskinesia of the left ventricular seg-ment, absence of obstructive coronary disease, new electro-cardiogram abnormalities, absence of recent significant head trauma, pheochromocytoma, myocarditis, and hyper-trophic cardiomyopathy. Prognosis is usually favorable since the wall motion abnormality returns to normal with-in days, and certainly within the first month. We encoun-tered a case of SLE with apical ballooning on echocardiog-raphy in a 44-year-old woman. She was suffering from se-vere left ventricular dysfunction that has persisted on 5 year follow-up echocardiography. We report this case along with a review of the relevant literature.

Keywords: Systemic lupus erythematosus, Persistent ap-ical ballooning