Personalized medicine to treat arrhythmias.

Highlights: [•] Most antiarrhythmic drugs were developed when arrhythmia mechanisms were poorly understood. [•] Antiarrhythmic drug therapy is not predictably effective and can produce serious side effects. [•] Family and population studies identify DNA variants generating the arrhythmia-prone heart. [•] Mechanism-based therapy is now being realized in some genomically defined subsets. [•] Sequencing may in the future allow presymptomatic intervention in arrhythmia-prone patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]