Background: The pathophysiology and long-term prognosis of the transient left ventricular dysfunction syndrome (LVDS, Tako-Tsubo cardiomyopathy) is largely unknown.
Aims: To investigate the prevalence of malignancies and long-term mortality in patients with LVDS.
Methods and results: Fifty patients with LVDS (47 females and 3 men, age 70+/-10 years) and 50 age- and gender-matched control patients with acute anterior myocardial infarction (MI) were evaluated. Nine patients (18%) with LVDS and 3 patients (6%) with MI had a previous history of malignancy at the time of the index event. On follow-up (2.9+/-1.6 years), 7 malignancies were newly diagnosed in the LVDS cohort whereas no new case of malignancy was found in the control group (p=0.01, odds ratio 16.95, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.93-304.60). Overall mortality during follow-up did not differ significantly between both groups (hazard ratio 1.44 for death in LVDS patients, 95% CI 0.52-3.95, p=0.49); however, of those patients who died, cardiac deaths were more frequent in patients with MI (100% versus 11% in patients with LVDS, p<0.001).
Conclusions: Our data suggest an association of LVDS with malignancies, potentially as a result of paraneoplastic phenomena. Long-term prognosis of patients with LVDS is no better than in patients with acute MI.