Left ventricular false tendons in children: Prevalence as detected by 2-dimensional echocardiography and clinical significance

Echocardiographic recognition and implications of ventricular hypertrophic trabeculations and aberrant bands.

“…The prevalence of aberrant left ventricular bands, as recognized by echocardiography, ranges from 0.5% to 50%. [6][7][8][9][10] In the approximately 200 cases of aberrant bands reported, pathologic confirmation of the echocardiographic find-ings was available in only four cases.-'-Thus the reliability of two-dimensional echocardiography for recognizing left ventricular aberrant bands has not been established.…”

False Tendons in the Left Ventricle

“…Fifteen of 16 pediatric patients (94%) with no heart disease except the presence of false tendons reported by Perry et al [4] had a murmur with tonal qualities of Still's type. Vered et al [9] reported that none of the 9 normal subjects with false tendons had systolic precordial murmurs.…”

“…Perry et al [4] believe that false tendons can be a source of arrhythmias, permitting reentry by a focal mechanism. These authors observed rate-dependent pre mature ventricular contractions in their pediatric popu lation and speculated that the disappearance of ventric ular ectopy with exercise in some cases could have been related to the decreasing tension of false tendons second ary to the decreasing left ventricular dimension.…”

“…They have varying lengths and thicknesses and can be single or multiple [1][2][3][4][5], False tendons were described about a century ago as incidental findings at autopsy and defined as sort of moderator bands of the left ventricle [6,7], Recently their role in the pathogenesis of ventricular arrhythmias and systolic murmurs has been reevaluated [4, 5, 8-…”

Giant Anomalous Left Ventricular Band: An Echocardiographie Diagnosis

“…Although the false tendons are usually very thin, they have been noted to be up to 9 mm at their base [11]. Greater than 90% of these false tendons are fibrous in nature, with 8-10% muscular in structure [7], The clinical significance of false chordae tendineae is usually minimal, and they frequently occur in the absence of heart disease or other morphologic abnormalities [3-9], These bands, however, have been associated with sys tolic murmurs [4,9] in up to 94% of patients without heart disease, usually the Still's type innocent murmur…”