Cats Have Nine Lives but This Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Patient Has Had Ten (So Far)

Abstract

In this report, we describe the unusual but highly informative clinical course of a high-risk hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patient who has to date experienced 10 appropriate primary prevention implantable cardioverter-defibrillator therapies terminating ventricular fibrillation over a 19-year period. Most patients in the Tufts HCM cohort with primary prevention experienced either 1 such therapy (66%) or 1 to 3 interventions (91%) over time. These observations underscore the opportunity for sudden death prevention in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy attributable to efficacy of the implanted defibrillator and the reliability of the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology individual risk marker strategy.