Background: Patients with a history of ventricular fibrillation (VF) have been shown to have a clinical profile, response to electrophysiological testing (EPS), and response to antiarrhythmic therapy that distinguishes them from patients with a history of sustained monomorphic ventricular tachycardia (MVT). Despite these differences, it is not clear whether VF in these patients is triggered by MVT or occurs de novo. The incidence of MVT and VF in such patients after their index VF event has important implications for therapeutic decisions regarding implantable defibrillator selection and programming.
Methods and results: The records of 111 consecutive patients who had undergone transvenous cardioverter/defibrillator (ICD) implantation for malignant ventricular arrhythmias were reviewed retrospectively. For each patient, all device tachyarrhythmia detections were examined and classified as VF, MVT, rapid polymorphic VT, or other. The number of events, time to first arrhythmia detection, and cycle length of MVTs were recorded. There were 55 patients with a history of only VF and 56 with a history that included an episode of MVT. Over 14 months of follow-up, with all patients initially off of antiarrhythmic medications, MVT was detected by only 18% of patients with a history of only VF compared with 54% of those with a history that included MVT (P = .002). Among patients who did detect MVT, those with a history of only VF had fewer episodes (7 +/- 7 versus 20 +/- 31, P = .001) and a shorter mean MVT cycle length (279 versus 314 ms, P = .03) than those with a clinical history of MVT. Abrupt onset of VF not preceded by MVT was detected in 11% of patients with VF only. In addition to a history of MVT, male sex, age < 60 years, and MVT inducible on EPS were all significantly associated with an increased likelihood of MVT detection. On multivariate analysis, the inducibility of MVT was the primary independent predictor of MVT detection but was of minimal incremental predictive value in the subgroup of patients with a history of only VF. When EPS results were not considered, arrhythmia history was the primary independent predictor of MVT detection.
Conclusions: Patients with a history of only VF infrequently have MVT detected by their defibrillators. When these patients do detect MVT, it is faster than that detected in patients with a clinical history of MVT before ICD surgery. A significant percentage of VF survivors detected the abrupt onset of VF not preceded by MVT, suggesting that the deterioration of rapid MVT to VF is not the only clinically important mechanism of VF induction. These findings may have important implications for the understanding of the mechanism of VF induction and for use of an implantable defibrillator.