Long-term prognostic assessment of ventricular tachycardia with respect to sudden death in patients with and without overt heart disease.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the long-term prognosis of ventricular tachycardia (VT) mainly with respect to sudden death (SCD) in patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD), idiopathic cardiomyopathy (ICM), miscellaneous heart disease (MHD) and idiopathic ventricular tachycardia (IVT). The study included 117 patients with VT (80 male, 37 female). The number of patients with IHD, ICM, MHD and IVT were 40, 18, 26 and 33, respectively. Follow-up was conducted by means of a mailed standardized questionnaire. The mean follow-up period was 46.8 +/- 32.0 months (range from 6 to 125 months). In 24 out of the 117 patients the cause of death was SCD, in 9 there was no sudden cardiac death and in 5 no cardiac death. The other 76 were surviving. The number of SCD in IHD, ICM, MHD and IVT was 14/40 (35%), 4/17 (24%), 6/25 (24%) and zero (0%), respectively. The number of having had syncope in IHD, ICM, MHD and IVT was 19/40 (48%), 7/18 (39%), 6/26 (23%) and 6/33 (18%), respectively. Out of the 19 IHD patients with syncope, 15 had had ventricular fibrillation (VF). As for IVT with syncope, only one of the 6 had VF, which was induced by a disopyramide injection. In IVT, the patients with syncope had a significantly higher VT rate than those without syncope (p less than 0.01). There were no significant differences in the electrocardiographical high risk parameters for SCD, the age, follow-up periods, the presence or absence of VF and ejection fraction between the SCD and the surviving groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)