Tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy and microcirculation

Background Takotsubo cardiomyopathy was described for the first time in Japan in the 1990s. It is very similar to the ischemic cardiopathy both for clinical and instrumental characteristics. His peculiarity is an alteration of the ventricular contraction mechanism with hypo-akinesis of the apex and lateral segments of the left ventricle, associated with hyper-kinesis of the heart base which is responsible for the typical echocardiographic aspect of a cruet during the systole. However, the etiology of this cardiomyopathy is still unknown despite the fact that numerous hypothesis have been made. A single study of 16 patients proved multivasal damage by a BLASH SCORE analysis of the coronary radiography. In our study, performed on 24 patients, we intended to assess the actual implication of the microcirculation by analyzing the TIMI frame count (TFC), so as reporting correlations between alterations of each single artery and its respective myocardial area.