Ventricular Angiography: A Forgotten Diagnostic Tool?

TL;DR

A 76-year-old man with late-onset arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy was diagnosed using ventricular angiography, a rarely used tool.

Contribution

Demonstrates the diagnostic value of ventricular angiography in diagnosing ARVC in an elderly patient with no family history.

Findings

Right ventricular angiography revealed a 'pile d’assiettes' appearance, supporting ARVC diagnosis.

The patient represents the oldest reported case of ARVC without familial history.

ECG and MRI findings were consistent with ARVC but were confirmed by angiography.

Abstract

A 76-year-old male patient presented to the emergency room with acute decompensated right heart failure and presyncope episodes. Upon admission, his electrocardiogram (ECG) showed sustained monomorphic ventricular tachycardia at 180 bpm, which was electrically cardioverted, and the patient was subsequently admitted to the intensive care unit. The echocardiography showed a very dilated right ventricle (RV) with global systolic dysfunction and akinetic anterior and lateral walls. The coronary angiography was normal. The cardiac magnetic resonance showed signs of fibro-fatty replacement of the RV myocardium. Furthermore, the ECG after cardioversion showed inverted T waves and an epsilon wave in V1–V3 leads and late potentials by signal-averaged ECG. As such, a diagnosis of arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) was suspected. However, he presented no familial history of ARVC, was 76 years of age at the time of diagnosis and was asymptomatic until now. Given these considerations, we performed a right ventricular angiography which showed dilatation of the RV with akinetic/dyskinetic bulging, creating the “pile d’assiettes” image suggestive of ARVC. In the case of this patient, the RV angiography contributed to establish a diagnosis of ARVC with a very late presentation, to our knowledge the latest presentation in terms of age described in the literature.

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