SCTC Cardiac Sub-Committee Updates Business Meeting 2015 ALESSANDRA VACCA

September 2015: Examination of Mortality and the Need for Electrical Device Implantation in Systemic Sclerosis Patients with Cardiac Conduction and Rhythm Abnormalities.  

Objective: to retrospectively collect SSc patients who required pace maker (PM) or implantable cardioverter devices (ICD) who died because of arrhythmia or conduction abnormalities to investigate possible correlations with disease phenotype in these subgroups To identify markers predictive of severe arrhythmias and conduction abnormalities in SSc

Expected results to select about 40-50 patients to include in this study to differentiate between mild abnormalities and those leading to a fatal outcome

SEVERE ARRHYTHMIA OR CONDUCTION ABNORMALITIES Which SSc patients to be included? Patients with PM or ICD Dead because of arrhythmia or conduction abnormalities SEVERE ARRHYTHMIA OR CONDUCTION ABNORMALITIES

Next steps Fill the forms with the data required Search for 1-2 patients as a control group matched for sex, age, cutaneous subtype (diffuse/limited) and disease duration with no symptoms and normal ECG. Send to ales.vacca@tiscali.it All participating centers would be co-author(s) in this work

Timeline A remind will be send after ACR and in January 2016 Collect the data by March 2016 Present the results by ACR 2017