European Heart Journal Advance Access originally published online on January 16, 2009
European Heart Journal 2009 30(3):253-255; doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehn587
Published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. © The Author 2009. For permissions please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Long QT syndrome, a purely electrical disease? Not anymore
1 Department of Cardiology, Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Italy
2 Section of Cardiology, Department of Lung, Blood and Heart, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
3 Laboratory of Cardiovascular Genetics, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy
4 Cardiovascular Genetics Laboratory, Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research, Department of Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa
* Corresponding author. Tel: + 39 0382 503567, Fax: + 39 0382 503002. Email: peter.schwartz@unipv.it
This editorial refers to ‘Left ventricular mechanical dispersion by tissue Doppler imaging: a novel approach for identifying high risk individuals with long QT syndrome’
, by K.H. Haugaa et al. on page 330
Footnotes
The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Editors of the European Heart Journal or of the European Society of Cardiology.
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The identification in 1995–1996 of the three major genes for the long QT syndrome (LQTS) has opened up the molecular era for arrhythmogenic disorders and has led to the frequent use of the term ‘channelopathies’ to define several diseases characterized by a high potential for life-threatening arrhythmias and by being caused by mutations on genes encoding ion channels involved in the control of the action potential.1 Another concept, developed in parallel, was that of ‘primary electrical diseases’ which is now regularly applied to disorders such as LQTS, Brugada syndrome, catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, short QT syndrome, and others.2,3 ‘Primary electrical diseases’ soon became equivalent to ‘purely electrical diseases’ and the consensus still is that in these diseases there are no mechanical dysfunctions. As far as
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- Left ventricular mechanical dispersion by tissue Doppler imaging: a novel approach for identifying high-risk individuals with long QT syndrome
- Kristina Hermann Haugaa, Thor Edvardsen, Trond P. Leren, Jon Michael Gran, Otto A. Smiseth, and Jan P. Amlie
EHJ 2009 30: 330-337.[Abstract] [FREE Full Text]
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L. Belardinelli, A. Dhalla, and J. Shryock Abnormal left ventricular relaxation in patients with long QT syndrome Eur. Heart J., November 2, 2009; 30(22): 2813 - 2814. [Full Text] [PDF]
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