Inappropriate defibrillator shocks and mortality

• Published in: Heart (British Cardiac Society) Vol. 99; no. 17; pp. 1223 - 1224
• Main Author: Liew, Reginald
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Cardiovascular Society 01.09.2013; BMJ Publishing Group LTD
• Subjects: Arrhythmias, Cardiac - therapy; Cardiac arrhythmia; Death, Sudden, Cardiac - prevention & control; Defibrillators; Defibrillators, Implantable - adverse effects; Female; Heart attacks; Heart Transplantation - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Male; Mortality
• ISSN: 1355-6037; 1468-201X; 1468-201X
• DOI: 10.1136/heartjnl-2013-304031

[...]66% of subjects in the MADIT II study had a New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class between 2 and 4 ,and 30.5% of subjects in the SCD-HeFT study were in NYHA class 3, whereas only 7.8% of subjects in the study by Deyell et al 11 with inappropriate shocks were in NYHA class 3-4. [...]although the study by Deyell et al 11 included patients with ICD implanted for secondary prevention, the subjects may have been less sick (as evidenced by a better NYHA class compared to the primary prevention studies), which may partly explain why inappropriate shocks did not appear to affect mortality adversely in this heart failure population.