Article Text

Download PDFPDF
Myocardial disease
Prevention of sudden cardiac death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
  1. Constantinos O'Mahony1,2,
  2. Perry M Elliott1
  1. 1The Inherited Cardiac Diseases Unit, The Heart Hospital/University College London, London, UK
  2. 2The Heart Muscle Clinic, The London Chest Hospital, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Perry M Elliott, The Inherited Cardiac Diseases Unit, The Heart Hospital, 16-18 Westmoreland Street, London W1G 8PH, UK; perry.elliott{at}ucl.ac.uk

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic disorder of cardiac muscle with a prevalence of 1 in 500 of the general population.w1 In most adults, HCM is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait caused by mutations in genes encoding cardiac sarcomere proteins.1 The disease is clinically defined by left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) unexplained by abnormal loading conditions,2 and is often associated with left ventricular outflow tract obstruction (LVOTO) caused by the systolic anterior movement of the mitral valve.w2 Histologically, HCM is characterised by cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and disarray, myocardial fibrosis, and small vessel disease.1 w3

Sudden cardiac death (SCD), heart failure, and thromboembolism are the main causes of death.3 Early studies of small HCM cohorts from tertiary referral centres reported cardiovascular mortality rates of ∼6%/year, but later less selected studies demonstrated a more favourable clinical course with an overall cardiovascular mortality of ∼2%/year.3 Nevertheless, SCD still occurs with an incidence of ∼0.8%/year, peaking in early adulthood.4 ,5 As observational data suggest that implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) can prevent SCD, there is a clinical need to identify accurately individual patients at high risk.

Causes of SCD

Numerous cardiac arrhythmias have been reported in association with SCD in HCM, including asystole,w4 atrioventricular block,w5 pulseless electrical activity,w6 w7 and supraventricular arrhythmias.w8 Data from chance electrocardiographic recordings and stored intracardiac electrograms from ICDs suggest that SCD in HCM is most commonly caused by ventricular fibrillation (VF).w9 w10 The characteristic cellular disarray and cardiac hypertrophy facilitate the development of re-entry arrhythmias,w11 and delayed after depolarisations caused by calcium (Ca2+) leak from the sarcoplasmic reticulum render the myocardium vulnerable to triggered activity.w12 Increased myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity also causes shorter effective refractory periods and increased dispersion of repolarisation, predisposing to functional re-entry.w13

Despite …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Contributors COM and PME both reviewed the literature, interpreted the data, and drafted the manuscript. Both authors are responsible for the overall content as guarantors.

  • Funding This work was undertaken at University College London Hospitals/University College London who received a proportion of funding from the Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres funding scheme.

  • Competing interests In compliance with EBAC/EACCME guidelines, all authors participating in Education in Heart have disclosed potential conflicts of interest that might cause a bias in the article. The authors have no competing interests.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

Linked Articles

  • Heartbeat
    Catherine M Otto