Tag Archives: ventricular tachycardia

Introduction Implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) have become the cornerstone in preventing sudden cardiac death in susceptible patients or survivors of malignant ventricular arrhythmias (VAs).1-3 Although they terminate VA and improve survival, there is still a risk of recurrent VAs and ICD shocks, which are associated with profound psycho-social stress, worsening heart failure (HF) and increased mortality.2-4 Several strategies are available to address this, with specific advantages and risks. Programming to delayed-detection therapy windows can attenuate ICD therapy risk, but do not completely eliminate shocks.5 Anti-arrhythmic drugs

Introduction Loperamide-induced cardiac toxicity is rare but potentially fatal. We describe a case of long-term overdose in a vulnerable young adult, leading to a near-fatal cardiac event. Case A 34-year-old woman was referred to a tertiary centre cardiology team with multiple episodes of pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT) requiring direct current (DC) cardioversion. The patient initially presented to a district general hospital (DGH) with a seizure preceded by palpitations. In the emergency department (ED) she had three witnessed episodes of pulseless VT, each requiring a single 200 J shock before achieving return of spontaneous circulat

Background Hypothyroidism is a common endocrine disorder, which has a variety of effects on the cardiovascular system including decreased cardiac output, increased systemic vascular resistance, accelerated atherosclerosis and rhythm disturbances, such as sinus bradycardia, conduction defects or non-specific ST changes.1,2 Hypothyroidism can also cause prolongation of the QTc interval and ventricular arrhythmias.1 Case presentation A 76-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital with a collapse, and while in the emergency department she sustained a witnessed cardiac arrest secondary to torsades de pointes (TdP) (figure 1). This was terminated

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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