Register for email alerts and news feeds:
This journal | BMJ Group
rss
Heart 2008;94:963-966; doi:10.1136/hrt.2008.143594
Copyright © 2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & British Cardiovascular Society

FEATURED EDITORIAL

Patients with heart failure who require an implantable defibrillator should have cardiac resynchronisation routinely

John G F Cleland, Ahmed Tageldien, Nidal Maarouf, Neil Hobson

Department of Cardiology, Castle Hill Hospital, Hull Royal Infirmary and University of Hull, Kingston-upon-Hull, UK

Correspondence to:
Professor John G F Cleland, Department of Cardiology, University of Hull, Castle Hill Hospital, Kingston-upon-Hull, HU16 5JQ, UK; j.g.cleland@hull.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Should patients with heart failure who require an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) get a device capable of delivering cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT-D) routinely? For those that like to read the conclusions first, the answer is "yes". It is difficult to justify implanting only a defibrillator in anyone who has heart failure and an indication for an ICD. Most of these patients should get a CRT-D device.

This conclusion might seem odd at first but the arguments are quite straightforward. National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines1 suggest that patients with heart failure as a result of ischaemic heart disease (IHD) should get an ICD if their left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is <35% and they also have non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (NSVT) on ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring and inducible ventricular tachycardia (VT) on electrophysiological monitoring, provided that the patient is not in end-stage heart failure and is not within one . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Scott, P. A., Turner, N. G., Chungh, A., Morgan, J. M., Roberts, P. R. (2009). Varying implantable cardioverter defibrillator referral patterns from implanting and non-implanting hospitals. Europace 11: 1048-1051 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
  • Cleland, J. G.F., Coletta, A. P., Clark, A. L., Cullington, D. (2009). Clinical trials update from the American College of Cardiology 2009: ADMIRE-HF, PRIMA, STICH, REVERSE, IRIS, partial ventricular support, FIX-HF-5, vagal stimulation, REVIVAL-3, pre-RELAX-AHF, ACTIVE-A, HF-ACTION, JUPITER, AURORA, and OMEGA. Eur J Heart Fail 11: 622-630 [Abstract] [Full Text]  

This Article

Services
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.