WEDNESDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- The need to identify risk factors for non-sudden cardiac death in children with isolated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is at least as important as finding risk factors for sudden cardiac death (SCD), according to research published in the July 14 Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Jamie A. Decker, M.D., of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues analyzed data from a cohort of 96 patients, under the age of 18 years, diagnosed with isolated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy over a two-decade period to assess whether adult risk factors for SCD predict outcome in children.
The researchers found that cardiac death or transplantation occurred in 11 patients. No single or multiple adult risk factors for SCD, such as syncope or non-sustained ventricular tachycardia, predicted SCD. However, non-SCD or transplant was at least as common as SCD in these patients. The authors further note that extreme left ventricular hypertrophy and abnormal exercise response were predictive of non-SCD.
"Patients managed with our treatment algorithm demonstrated greater than 80 percent survival over 20 years of follow-up. Cardiac death was at least as likely to be from non-SCD as SCD. Therefore, the ability to predict non-SCD is as important as the ability to predict SCD. A left ventricular wall thickness z-score greater than six and an abnormal blood pressure response to exercise were found to be risk factors for non-SCD and therefore warrant close follow-up and further study in a large multicenter cohort," the authors conclude.
Several co-authors reported financial relationships with medical equipment makers or pharmaceutical companies.
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