Reply to letter: Claudia Stöllberger, M.D., Josef Finsterer, M.D., P h.D. "Consider cardiac and neurological comorbidity and complications in patients with noncompaction and implantable cardioverter defibrillators"

To the Editor:
We thank colleagues Stöllberger and Finsterer for their interest in our recent paper and their correspondence regarding it.
The authors of this letter indeed raise important issues; however, we must remind them that the main purpose of our study was to evaluate the indications and outcome of noncompaction cardiomyopathy (NCCM) patients without or with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) for primary or secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death according to the current ICD/heart failure guidelines. Therefore, the claim for the largest cohort was regarding the NCCM patients treated with an ICD (n = 44), and not the whole NCCM cohort itself.
Importantly, in the study by Habib et al., 29 out of 105 patients (28%) were treated with an ICD. Moreover, no ICD-related outcome was reported.[...]