Temporal patterns of ventricular tachyarrhythmia recurrences follow a Weibull distribution.

UNLABELLED: Temporal patterns of ventricular tachyarrhythmias. INTRODUCTION: The objective of this study was to test whether the temporal patterns of ventricular tachyarrhythmia recurrences in patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) follow a random or a clustered distribution. METHODS: Data analysis was conducted using the Medtronic (Minneapolis, MN) Gem DR database of 521 ICD patients. Patients with >or=3 sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmia detections that resulted in shock or antitachycardia pacing therapies were studied. The times between consecutively treated ICD detections for each patient were compared to an exponential model of random recurrences and a Weibull model for clustered recurrences. RESULTS: Seventy-one patients had >or=3VT episodes during follow-up of 131+/-86 days. A total of 2347 VT episodes were recorded (33+/-65 episodes/patient, median 10 episodes/patient). Patient age was 66+/-13 years, 78% male, 83% coronary artery disease, ejection fraction 31+/-11%, and 63% were taking antiarrhythmic drugs. By the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit test, 38 of 71 patients (53.5%) showed that the pattern of detections differed from an exponential model (P<0.01 for each patient and the proportion of patients was similar to chance at P=0.65). In contrast, only 11 out of 71 patients (15.5%) showed that the pattern differed from the Weibull model (P<0.01 for each patient). The proportion of patients fitting the Weibull model was significantly greater than chance and was greater that the proportion fitting the exponential model (both P<0.001). The time interval between consecutive detections was less than 1 hour for 78% of all 2347 detections. The proportion of all 521 patients with >or=2, >or=3, >or= 4, >or=6, >or=8, and >or=10 ICD detections in a 24-hour period was 10.5%, 9.5%, 8.1%, 7.0%, 6.3%, and 5.2%, respectively. CONCLUSION: In most patients with >or=3 ICD detections, the recurrence pattern of treated ventricular tachyarrhythmia detections are clustered and can be described by a Weibull distribution. The proportion of patients with multiple detections in a 24-hour period declines in a linear fashion as the number of events in 24 hours increases from 2 to 10 events.

Ventricular rate stabilization for the prevention of pause dependent ventricular tachyarrhythmias: results from a prospective study in 309 ICD recipients.

Reviews of stored electrograms from ICDs revealed a 5-30% incidence of short-long-short intervals preceding the onset of recurrent ventricular tachyarrhythmias. Rate stabilization by dedicated antibradycardia pacing algorithms has, therefore, been suggested to prevent onset of pause dependent tachyarrhythmias. However, the clinical efficacy of this approach has not been studied systematically. In a prospective multicenter crossover study, patients were randomized to activation or deactivation of an implemented ventricular rate stabilization algorithm (VRS) after first implant of a dual chamber ICD. After 3 months, all patients were crossed over to the alternate programming. The rate of appropriate spontaneous VA episodes was compared between VRS On and VRS Off. Stored electrograms were reviewed for evaluation of the mode of onset of tachyarrhythmias. Overall efficacy analysis was based on 309 patients enrolled in the study. Forty percent (124/309) of the patients experienced 4,973 VA episodes. Based on an intention-to-treat analysis, VRS Off and On arrhythmia incidence was 10.2 and 6.6 normalized to 3 months, respectively (risk reduction 35%; P = 0.18) On an on-treatment basis, a reduction from 9.0 episodes to 8.1 episodes (10% risk reduction, P = 0.24) was seen. In an extended Cox model adjusting for confounding variables, the relative risk for recurrent episodes was 0.92 during VRS On compared to Off (95% CI: 0.58-1.48; P = 0.74). During VRS Off, pause dependent onset was documented in only 36 (8%) of 427 visually analyzed episodes. There was no significant reduction in the incidence of recurrent ventricular tachyarrhythmias with VRS On compared to the Off programming in this prospective study.