Featured correspondence
Stress cardiomyopathy or Takotsubo syndrome
1 Instituto de Investigacion Biomedica de A Coruna, A Coruna, Spain
2 Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, Spain
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to Dr R Barriales-Villa, Instituto de Investigacion Biomedica de A Coruna (INIBIC), As Xuvias s/n, A Coruna 15006, Spain; rbarrialesv@gmail.com
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
To the editor: We would like to congratulate Madhavan et al1 for their excellent paper in the journal. However, we would like to make some comments. As a result of the fact that in their cohort of patients with apical ballooning syndrome (ABS) they did not find elevated catecholamine and cortisol levels, they affirm in their conclusions that "routine measurement of catecholamines in clinical practice is unlikely to be of diagnostic value among patients suspected of ABS".
A number of patients described in the international literature with ABS or stress cardiomyopathy presented with a pheochromocytoma as an underlying condition.2 3 Although the most characteristic feature of these tumours is paroxysmal hypertension, 50% of the patients present with "fixed" high blood pressure and approximately 10% have normal blood pressure.4 In some of the published cases, such as those with normal blood pressure, ABS cannot be distinguished from catecholamine-induced cardiomyopathy.2 3 Do they share
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