Introduction: Ventricular oversensing (OS) of respirophasic noise transients may cause spurious detections and therapies and pacing inhibition among patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). The incidence of OS and its relationship to clinical variables and ICD system design are unknown.
Methods and results: Three hundred twenty-nine patients performed provocative respiratory maneuvers at rest during intrinsic rhythm and continuous ventricular pacing. OS resulting in spurious ventricular detections was provoked in 3 (0.9%) of 329 patients during intrinsic rhythm and 34 (10.3%) of 329 during pacing. Noise transients not recognized and marked as sensed events, but visually evident on the local endocardial ventricular electrogram, were provoked in an additional 23 (7.0%) of 329 patients. Multivariate logistic regression identified history of spontaneous OS (P < 0.0005, odds ratio 9.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.9 to 50.0), automatic gain control device (P < 0.0005, odds ratio 5.3, 95% CI 2.6 to 10.8) or integrated bipolar lead (P = 0.05, odds ratio 2.6, 95% CI 1.0 to 7.25), and male gender (P = 0.008, odds ratio 3.7, 95% CI 1.2 to 11.1) as predictive of provocable OS. Spontaneous OS resulting in spurious ventricular detections and therapies occurred in 12 (3.6%) patients during follow-up. Eleven of 12 spontaneous episodes occurred in male patients during ventricular pacing; 11 of 12 patients had automatic gain control devices and integrated bipolar leads.
Conclusion: OS is commonly provoked in ICD patients during ventricular pacing and may occur spontaneously, causing spurious tachyarrhythmia therapies and pacing inhibition. Differences in the incidence of spontaneous and provoked OS between ICD systems can be explained on the basis of unique features of automatic sensing systems and sensing lead design.