Possible prevention by amlodipine of ventricular fibrillation related to brief ischemia episodes.

Calcium antagonists may reduce propensity to ventricular fibrillation, by altering the balance between coronary blood flow and metabolic demand, and thus may substantially prolong time to occurrence of fibrillations. This delay in the onset of fibrillation should be sufficient to prevent sudden death in the case of transitory episodes of myocardial ischemia. Therefore, this study was based on the determination of time to onset of fibrillation in an animal model of transitory ischemia. This model was achieved by the complete, but transitory occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery near its origin under ventricular pacing at a constant high rate (180 beats/min), in anesthetized, open-chest pigs. Amlodipine was preferred to another calcium antagonist for this study because it is among the least negatively inotropic of these drugs. It was intravenously infused at 0.02 mg.kg-1.min-1. Time to fibrillation was prolonged from 87 +/- 10 to 146 +/- 16 s (p < 0.05) with the 0.30 mg/kg dose and to 201 +/- 22 s (p < 0.05) with the 0.60 mg/kg dose, without serious impairment of blood pressure or left ventricular dP/dtmax in the absence of ischemia. Concurrently, amlodipine significantly limited the shortening of monophasic action potential duration (200 +/- 4 vs. 172 +/- 6 ms), the lengthening of conduction time (43 +/- 2 vs. 53 +/- 2 ms), and the alterations of ST segments and T waves induced by 60 s ischemic depolarization. Consequently, amlodipine might reduce the incidence of sudden death by lengthening time to onset of fibrillation beyond the duration of the ischemia, when transitory.