© 2004 by BMJ Publishing Group & British Cardiac Society
EDITORIAL
Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators for children and young adolescents: mortality benefit confirmed—what’s next?
1 Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
2 Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Florida
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Samuel F Sears
PhD, University of Florida, Department of Clinical & Health Psychology, Box 100165 UF Health Science Center, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA; ssears@hp.ufl.edu
The implantable cardioverter-defibrillator can present significant psychological difficulties for some younger patients, not least because of increased lifestyle disruption and the likely experience of shock
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is the treatment of choice for potentially life threatening ventricular arrhythmias. Consistent with the adult clinical trial data for both primary and secondary prevention, Gradaus and colleagues1 followed children and young adolescents with ICDs for an average of four years and found that the children’s total survival was excellent (95.8%). The demonstrated mortality benefit demonstrated by Gradaus and colleagues1 in this issue of Heart allows us to turn our attention to psychosocial issues and quality of life (QoL) of young ICD patients.2
We reported that younger age and greater frequency of ICD firings were the two most commonly reported ICD specific risk factors for psychological distress.3 Younger patients (50 years and younger) may experience greater problems because of increased lifestyle disruption and distressing social comparisons.2 In addition to adjusting to the risk of potentially life threatening arrhythmias, young patients must deal with the presence of the
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Berul, C. I., Van Hare, G. F., Kertesz, N. J., Dubin, A. M., Cecchin, F., Collins, K. K., Cannon, B. C., Alexander, M. E., Triedman, J. K., Walsh, E. P., Friedman, R. A.
(2008). Results of a Multicenter Retrospective Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator Registry of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease Patients. J Am Coll Cardiol
51: 1685-1691
[Abstract] [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
- Citation Map
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
Topic Collections
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.
