NEW YORK, Oct 04 (Reuters Health) -- Patients who have weakened heart function have an improved chance of survival after receiving an implantable ), a special pacemaker that corrects certain potentially lethal abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias.
Patients who survive one episode of life-threatening arrhythmia face a high risk of a fatal recurrent arrhythmia, according to Dr. Michael Domanski from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and his colleagues from the Antiarrhythmics Versus Implantable Defibrillators (AVID) study. Their report is published in the October Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The investigators report that ICD works most effectively to improve the survival of patients whose heart muscle is weakened, as measured by left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), a test of the heart's pumping ability.
Patients whose LVEF was above 35% (normal is 50% or better) fared no better with ICD than with drug treatment, but those with an LVEF below 35% experienced significantly better survival with an ICD than with drug therapy, the results indicate.
The authors conclude that, for these patients with a lower LVEF, the ICD appears to offer better survival than drug therapy.
