Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy: Typical and Atypical Variants, A Two-Year Retrospective Cohort Study

Typical or classical takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TCM) is associated with the characteristic abnormality of a ballooned left ventricular apex with basal segmental hyperkinesis. TCM may not present with the "classical" wall motion abnormalities but can have a variety of segmental wall motion abnormalities. The aim of our work was to assess for any unique identifying factors that can help distinguish typical and atypical variants of TCM.

We studied 11 consecutive patients between 2010 and 2012 admitted with chest pain, electrocardiographic and cardiac biomarker changes consistent with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) who underwent left heart angiography and were clinically diagnosed to have TCM.

Our study found no specific features distinguishing typical and atypical variants of TCM. In our study, all patients were female and all had excellent outcome. One patient was in fourth decade of life, three patients in fifth and sixth decade of life, while remaining were older. One patient had diabetes mellitus, five had hypertension, four had concurrent coronary artery disease, but no patient had any family history of TCM. Nine of 11 patients had immediate clear-cut stressors. Three patients had normal ECG, two with ST segment elevation, with nine patients having only modest troponin elevations. One patient had an anomalous RCA take-off from the right coronary cusp, otherwise remaining patients had normal anatomy. One patient had only apical involvement, remaining had multiple wall motion abnormalities, and all patients had involvement of the anterior wall. Four patients had apical sparing. No inverted TCM pattern with basal akinesis with normal wall motion in the midventricular and apical regions was found among our patients.

We report that the classification of TCM as typical versus atypical is probably not clinically meaningful. The regional wall motion abnormalities are related to catecholamine excess and to the susceptibility of that particular region to excess catecholamine. We do not know why such differences in regional susceptibility exist, and agree with the other authors that sub-classification would only add to confusion, and a delay in understanding of the disease process.