Hélder Jorge Andrade Gomes et al. Alcides Rocha de Figueredo Junior
Despite substantially reducing age-adjusted cardiovascular mortality rates in recent decades, cardiovascular disease remains the most common cause of death. Studies estimate that sudden cardiac death is responsible for approximately 50% of all deaths from cardiovascular causes, with ventricular tachycardia with degeneration to ventricular fibrillation and asystole being the most common fatal sequence of pathophysiological events.
The hard work done by authors of the article published in the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia illustrates the role of cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in the etiological elucidation of sudden death events encountered in clinical practice. In addition to the already expected Chagas and ischemic diseases, a wide variety of other diagnoses have been recognized: myocarditis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, dilated cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic heart disease, muscular dystrophy, hypertensive cardiomyopathy, metastases, non-compacted myocardium, and adrenergic cardiomyopathy (Takotsubo syndrome). The CMR was conclusive in more than 90% of cases and is a key tool for excluding structural heart disease and attributing the fatal event to extracardiac causes.
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