Resumen

GUTIERREZ SOTELO, Oswaldo. Prevalencia de terapias inadecuadas con cardiodesfibriladores en la Clínica de Arritmias del Hospital México. Rev. costarric. cardiol [online]. 2004, vol.6, n.3, pp.7-12. ISSN 1409-4142.

Introduction: Implantable cardiodesfibrillators are indicated in patients with history of cardiorespiratory arrest and/or ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation. Therapies delivered by these devices includes antitachycardia pacing, cardioversion and defibrillation and there are mathematical algorithms to discriminate if an arrhythmia diagnosed is of ventricular or supraventricular origin. Because of mistakes during interpretation these devices can deliver inadequate therapies with negative consequences in quality of life and battery’s lifespan. Methods: The main objective of this study is to evaluate prevalence of inadequate therapies in patients with implanted defibrillators who were follow-up in the arrhythmia department of our hospital since june-2002 to july-2004. All devices were interrogated by telemetry and arrhythmic events were evaluated by mean of stored electrograms, assessing if delivered therapy was adequate or not. Results: There were 99 arrhythmic events stored in 16 patients. The total number of visits to the arrhythmia department were 33 (2.05 visits/patient). From 99 stored events, 22 were considered as inadequate (22.22%); excluding one patient with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia who had 64 adequately treated episodes on the same day and another one with 17 cardioversions the same day due to acute atrial fibrillation, prevalence of inadequate therapies was 45.45%. Conclusion: Prevalence of inadequate therapies is relatively frequent and the most common in this serie is atrial fibrillation interpreted as ventricular fibrillation due to misdiagnosis.

Palabras clave : Cardiodesfibrillators; Inadecuate Therapies.