Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy--time for Nordic cooperation!

This editorial discusses arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) with respect to diagnosis and organisation of patient care. Two papers in the current issue are commented upon. Aneq and coworkers present a long-term echocardiographic study on ARVC patients. Baseline changes were seldom diagnostic, but over years, changes in right ventricular structure and function occurred; the most consistent being increasing diameter of the right ventricular outflow tract. Haapalaita and coworkers used body surface ECG, comparing right and left ventricular types of ECG. The duration of electrical systole (QT-end) and the dispersion of the action potentials (QT peak-end) was longer in the right-sided compared to the left-sided leads in ARVC, at variance from in healthy controls, and the shortening effect of autonomic manoeuvres that activate sympathetic tone, was much more marked on the right side, compatible with the tendency of arrhythmias to occur under stress. An initiative to create a Nordic registry on ARVC has come from Denmark. This is highly welcomed; our individual institutions are too small to gain the experience needed for optimal patient care.