Introduction The study of inherited cardiomyopathies is a rapidly evolving area of cardiology. Increasingly recognized because of improvements in cardiac imaging, clinical genetics, and clinical knowledge, these unique disease entities often present in healthy individuals with dramatic clinical implications, both…
Definition, Epidemiology, and Etiology of Dilated Cardiomyopathy Definition Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a primary disease of the heart muscle that is characterized by dilation of the heart chambers and decreased heart contractility. Two echocardiographic criteria were proposed to define DCM:…
Historical Perspective In patients with a history of myocardial infarction (MI) who experience episodes of sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT), surgical treatment was the mainstay of procedural therapy before the advent of catheter ablation. Initial experience with aneurysmectomy showed only moderate…
Acknowledgments We thank David Soto, PhD, for his assistance with the preparation of figures. Electroanatomic Substrate If not promptly revascularized, coronary artery occlusion leads to infarction with subsequent scarring of the ventricular myocardium. During the infarct healing process, necrotic myocardium…
Bundle branch reentry ventricular tachycardia (BBRVT), first elucidated by Guerot and colleagues in 1974, is a unique, usually fast (200–300 beats/min), monomorphic tachycardia associated with hemodynamic collapse, syncope, and/or cardiac arrest. It has also been described as a mechanism for…
Various types of ventricular tachycardia (VT) are known to arise from the His-Purkinje network in patients with or without structural heart disease (SHD). This chapter describes the clinical manifestation, mechanism, diagnosis, and therapeutic options in each VT. We first focus…
Introduction Most ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) in patients without structural heart disease originate from the outflow tracts of the right ventricle (RV) and left ventricle (LV). However, up to 20% of idiopathic VAs may originate from non–outflow tract sites, including the…
Idiopathic ventricular tachycardias (VTs) typically occur in the absence of structural heart disease and can originate from multiple anatomic regions, including the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) and right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT), the left fascicular system, the mitral and…
Epidemiology History Irregularities in pulse and their association with poor outcomes have been recognized for centuries. The Chinese physician Pien Ts’Io, who lived around 6 bce , taught that occasional pulse irregularities did not predict an adverse outcome; however, frequent…
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is defined as death after a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in a patient with either known or previously undetected cardiac abnormalities in whom the mode and time of death are unexpected. Transient endogenous influences on cardiac…