Study Status: Not yet recruiting
Recruit Status: Not yet recruiting
Study Type: Observational
Official Title:
Brief Summary:
Background:
Disturbances of the heart's atrioventricular conduction - AV-block - may show by shortness of breath, fainting or sudden death. If AV-block is diagnosed in time pacemaker therapy may be lifesaving.
AV-block in younger can be seen along with structural or ischemic heart disease, congenital heart disease (incl. congenital AV-block) storage disorders, specific muscle diseases, sarcoidosis, Borrelia infection or drug intoxication. AV-block in younger can also be seen in conditions, primarily localized to the AV-node without other cardiac disease at diagnosis.
This form of AV-block is often hereditary and can be seen in families where relatives have another types of heart disease in form of fore example, cardiomyopathy, ion channel disease or sudden death. The different forms of presentation are due to the same gene mutation being expressed differently within the same family. Thus, early onset of AV-block (<50 years) may indicate hereditary AV-conduction disorder but it can also be the first manifestation of severe ion channel disease or cardiomyopathy.
Denmark has annually over 50 individuals <50 years treated with pacemaker due to advanced AV-block. There have been no overall figures regarding the causes of advanced AV-block, and therefore no systematic approach to diagnosing this group of patients. Furthermore, the prevalence of individuals with a genetic cause of AV-block is unknown and presumably an often overlooked diagnosis among younger patients with advanced AV-blok. There are no data on disease progression after diagnosis, and therefore there is no evidence-based knowledge about how these patients should be followed after diagnosis.
With modern gene tec