Why the study?
T-wave alternans is poorly understood and lacks uniform diagnostic criteria, and its underlying etiology can be easily overlooked despite signaling high risk of malignant arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.
Highlights the importance of investigating the etiology of T-wave alternans, such as hypocalcemia, to avoid misdiagnosis and poor outcomes.
Alerts clinicians to arrhythmia risk in hypoparathyroidism; hypothesis-generating for T-wave alternans as marker.
Hypoparathyroidism predisposes patients to hypocalcemia. Patients with hypoparathyroidism are thus at risk of electrocardiographic abnormalities, including T-wave alternans. T-wave alternans is poorly understood and lacks uniform diagnostic criteria. Its presence suggests myocardial electrical instability, and it has become an important sign for identifying patients at high risk of malignant arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. We report a rare case of T-wave alternans with torsade de pointes due to hypocalcemia. The etiology of T-wave alternans may easily be overlooked. It should thus be thoroughly investigated to avoid misdiagnosis and poor outcomes.
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Liu et al. (2022) studied this question.
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