ABSTRACT
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) - a death occurring within a short period after the onset of symptoms and from a cardiac cause - is a major mode of mortality worldwide. It is the outcome in a not insignificant proportion of patients with the syndrome of heart failure (HF), especially those with heart failure with reduced left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (HFREF). Early attempts to abort ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VAs) occurred in hospitals using externally applied defibrillators, first in the coronary care units and then in other hospital settings. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is characterised by increased thickness of the myocardial wall without dilatation of the LV cavity in the absence of any trigger for the increased LV thickness. Arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy is a genetically determined disorder characterised by replacement of the myocardial cells by fibro-fatty tissue, which is rather patchy and leads to the formation of small aneurysmal dilatations that were initially thought to exclusively affect the right ventricle (RV).
