Termination of Refractory Tachycardia by External Countershock

yENTRICUIAR and supraventricular tachyeardias are occasionally resistant to drug therapy and may culminate in congestive heart failure, circulatory collapse, ventricular fibrillation, and death. In this paper are presented recent experiences with eight patients in whom tachyeardias were unresponsive to drug therapy and were terminated by external electric countershock, usually unider general anesthesia. The technic of external electric countershock was originally developed for the termination of ventricular fibrillation without opening the chest.' It has become established as a safe, effective, and clinically practicable procedure for the emergency resuscitation of patients from this otherwise fatal arrhythmia.2 Using this technic in unconscious subjects, we have also terminated other arrhythmias, namely, ventricular taehyeardia causing Stokes-Adams attacks, and, in the experimental animal, ventricular tachyeardia, supraventricular tachyeardia, and atrial fibrillation.3 These successes in terminating arrhythmias other than ventricular fibrillation suggested the applicability of this technic to desperate, refractory tachyeardias.1-3