LAUSR

Takotsubo syndrome (TTS) is an acute and transient myocardial dysfunction of the left and/or right ventricle. The acute presentation is indistinguishable from that of an acute coronary syndrome, whereas no culprit lesion responsible for the distinct wall motion abnormality can be found on coronary angiography.1 Growing evidence suggests that the long-term prognosis of TTS is much worse than expected.1 Non-cardiovascular events including cancerrelated deaths contribute considerably to the increased mortality of TTS patients.2 Consequently, there is increasing speculation about a potential pathophysiological connection between cancer and TTS and some evidence that malignancies significantly influence the clinical course of TTS.3–5 The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the exact prevalence of malignancy and to assess its clinical consequences, including long-term survival, in a large cohort of TTS patients. A total of 286 TTS patients were included between February 2004 and April 2014. The diagnosis of TTS was confirmed using the revised Mayo Clinic criteria. The study was conducted in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. Informed consent for the use of medical data for research purposes was obtained. The medical records of all patients were screened. Data were supplemented by telephone interviews to determine the prevalence of malignancy. Follow-up was also conducted using standardized telephone interviews. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 22.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). A two-sided P-value of ≤0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. Data were presented as the mean ± standard deviation (SD)