Long QT syndrome, behind sudden death

Abstract

Long QT syndrome is a channelopathy that affects approximately one in 2,500 people, mainly young people. It is characterized by a prolongation of ventricular repolarization that is manifested by an increase in the QT interval on the electrocardiogram. This exposes patients to syncope and sudden death from ventricular fibrillation.

This syndrome is one of the possible causes of sudden death in sports. The management of symptomatic patients or those with electrocardiographic expression is known. However, in recent years, genetic mutations have been described, predisposing people to suffer from this pathology even without phenotypic manifestation. The increasingly widespread application of genetic testing has allowed discovering many carriers of this type of mutations.