Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Background:</jats:title><jats:p>The pathophysiology and long‐term prognosis of the transient left ventricular dysfunction syndrome (LVDS, Tako‐Tsubo cardiomyopathy) is largely unknown.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Aims:</jats:title><jats:p>To investigate the prevalence of malignancies and long‐term mortality in patients with LVDS.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methods and results:</jats:title><jats:p>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 (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic>=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, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic>=0.49); however, of those patients who died, cardiac deaths were more frequent in patients with MI (100% versus 11%in patients with LVDS, <jats:italic>p</jats:italic><0.001).</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusions:</jats:title><jats:p>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.</jats:p></jats:sec>