**3. The diagnosis of myocarditis in patients with ventricular arrhythmias**

Myocardial inflammation represents a potent pro-arrhythmic substrate, myocarditis should always be taken into account when facing with ventricular arrhythmias. Furthermore the detection of myocarditis as the pathological substrate underlying ventricular arrhythmias may be crucial as the identification of myocarditis as the etiology of the arrhythmias is actually important for targeting therapies and may have implications even for patients' relatives as discussed below in the chapter. In the last decades the development of new imaging techniques, in particular CMR, led to an increased recognition of myocarditis as a cause of ventricular arrhythmias.
