Introduction
Takotsubo syndrome (TS) is increasingly recognised by the medical community following its first description in five Japanese patients, mostly male, in 1990 by Sato et al.1 Dote, his colleague, named the syndrome Takotsubo in 1991 due to its characteristic left ventricle (LV) shape in systole (narrow neck and wide base) and similarity to the Japanese octopus trap (takotsubo).2 The syndrome is also termed apical ballooning syndrome, broken heart syndrome and stress cardiomyopathy, among other names.
Case one: a woman born in 1947
In January 2018 she was aged 70 and had been diagnosed with hypertension in 1996, but had no other card
