Could Cardiac MRI help predicting sudden cardiac death in patients with cardiomyopathy? The authors of this article aim to answer this question with their work.

Key points:

• Global Extra-Cellular Volume (ECV) identified the best Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients with increased Sudden cardiac death (SCD) risk.
• Global ECV performed equally well compared to a SCD risk score.
• Combined use of the SCD risk score and global ECV improved test accuracy.
• Combined use potentially improves selection of HCM patients for defibrillator implantation.

Article: Prediction of the estimated 5-year risk of sudden cardiac death and syncope or non-sustained ventricular tachycardia in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using late gadolinium enhancement and extracellular

Authors: Avanesov et al, December 2017, Volume 27, Issue 12, pp 5136–5145