Tag Archives: ventricular fibrillation

Lessons learnt from a tragic loss Dear Sirs, Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) without overt heart disease is thankfully rare but nevertheless an incredibly emotive condition principally because of its inherent predilection for younger patients.1 The recent case report by Westaby et al. with editorial by Sedgwick et al. highlights an important case whereby a young woman died following prolonged cardiopulmonary resuscitation attempts for refractory ventricular arrhythmias. The article concentrates on lessons learnt and potential improvements during the acute resuscitation phase. Principally the team examined the role and timing of the external LUCAS

We retrospectively evaluated our ICD database between September 2006 and October 2007 to determine baseline patient/procedure characteristics and details of defibrillation threshold assessment during implant. All patients underwent at least two defibrillation safety margin (DSM) tests (≥10 J below the maximum output of the device). Logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors predicting two successful consecutive DSM tests (with ≥10 J safety margin). A total of 264 procedures were performed (mean age ± standard error: 65.6 ± 0.8 years); 258 (97.7%) patients had successful first DSM test (with ≥10 J safety margin),

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