Clinical Management of Patients with Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators In the wake of numerous scientific studies demonstrating the clinical benefit of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), millions of these devices have been…
Permanent Pacemakers Clinical Indications The clinical indications for permanent pacemaker (PPM) implantation are covered in detail in Chapter 11. A brief recapitulation is provided in the subsequent text. Sinus Node…
Sudden Death Syndromes The most common etiology of sudden cardiac death (SCD) is acute ischemia or ventricular tachycardia (VT) resulting from prior myocardial infarction. Dilated cardiomyopathy from a nonischemic cause…
Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator Indications General Principles Current indications for implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) therapy are derived from the inclusion criteria of several pivotal clinical trials. Each of these studies demonstrated…
Ventricular Tachycardia Ventricular tachycardias (VTs) include a spectrum of arrhythmias that range from nonsustained asymptomatic VT to a sustained arrhythmia that results in a cardiac arrest. VTs are defined by…
Supraventricular Tachycardia Introduction and Mechanisms Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) refers to regular, narrow QRS complex rhythms typically in excess of 100 beats per minute (bpm). Atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation will…
Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome and Variants Ventricular preexcitation occurs in 0.1 to 3.1 out of 1,000 people, and is defined as activation of the ventricular myocardium by an atrial impulse earlier than…
Atrial Flutter Clinical Characteristics Atrial flutter is a regular, macro reentrant arrhythmia with an atrial rate of 250 to 320 beats per minute (bpm). The pathophysiology of atrial flutter is…
Atrial Fibrillation Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice. It is both a disease of aging with a prevalence reaching 10% in patients older…
