Sudden cardiac death in adults with congenital heart disease: Lessons to Learn from the ATROPOS registry.

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is one of the most frequent causes of death in adult patients with congenital heart disease (ACHD). Despite the rare frequency of its occurrence, the incident appears often when unexpected, and many affected patients had not been identified priorly. Data on predictors for SCD are limited since the total number of ACHD is low. As the cohort is heterogeneous, it is difficult to define uniform risk factors that apply to all ACHD. Complexity of the congenital heart disease appears to play a role, but other factors may also be relevant and have not been sufficiently identified yet. In current guidelines, recommendations are primarily based on data of patients without congenital heart disease. With the ATROPOS registry, we are aiming to identify reliable risk factors for SCD. The registry enables physicians globally to include patients with congenital heart disease who died of or survived SCD. After acquisition, the data will be compared to an age and complexity of disease matched cohort to perform a case-control analysis. Subsequently, a further analysis will be performed using deep learning algorithms with artificial intelligence to amplify the gathered information and find reliable risk factors.