Viewpoint
Atrial fibrillation coexisting with ventricular tachycardia: a challenge for dual chamber defibrillators
M Santini, R RicciDepartment of
Cardiology, San Filippo Neri Hospital, via Martinotti, 20, 00135 Rome,
Italy
Correspondence to: Professor Santini m.santini@rmnet.it
Accepted 28 February
2001
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
 |
Introduction |
|---|
Atrial
fibrillation is a very common arrhythmia in patients who need an
implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) because of life
threatening ventricular tachyarrhythmias. The prevalence of atrial
fibrillation at the time of implantation has been calculated to be as
high as 20% and it has been reported that during the lifespan of the
ICD more than 50% of patients may develop atrial fibrillation.1 Atrial fibrillation may lead to
inappropriate ventricular shocks,2 ventricular arrhythmia
induction,3 and thromboembolism after ventricular shocks
in the presence of unknown atrial fibrillation. Furthermore, data from
the AVID (antiarrhythmic versus implantable defibrillators) registry
showed that atrial fibrillation was an independent predictor of worse
survival.4 In our series (151 patients), 20% of patients
had atrial fibrillation before implantation and 31% suffered from the
first episode during a mean (SD) follow up of 24 (19) months. In fig 1,
survival free of atrial fibrillation after ICD implantation in our
series may be
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Rinaldi, C A, Simon, R D, Baszko, A, Bostock, J, Elliot, D, Bucknall, C A, Gill, J S S
(2004). A 17 year experience of inappropriate shock therapy in patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillators: are we getting any better?. Heart
90: 330-331
[Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
