We evaluated 126 patients with inducible sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmias to assess whether the response to procainamide during electrophysiologic study could predict responses to other conventional antiarrhythmic agents and combinations of agents. Thirty of 42 patients in whom tachycardia was not inducible after the administration of procainamide and 69 of 84 patients in whom ventricular...

OBJECTIVES We assessed the clinical presentation, natural history, and treatment response of atrial ectopic tachycardia (AET) in children <3 years of age (group 1) compared with those > or =3 years of age (group 2). BACKGROUND Atrial ectopic tachycardia is a common cause of chronic supraventricular tachycardia in children and can be resistant to pharmacologic therapy. Radiofrequency ablation ...

Antiarrhythmic drugs may aggravate or even induce ventricular arrhythmias. This type of adverse reaction is becoming more prevalent as the use of antiarrhythmic agents becomes more widespread. In a retrospective analysis of antiarrhythmic drug action, a worsening of arrhythmia was observed in 80 of 722 (11.1%) antiarrhythmic drug tests in 53 of 155 patients being treated for ventricular tachyar...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the use of antiarrhythmic agents and electrical cardioversion in the management of patients with atrial fibrillation complicating acute myocardial infarction, and their relation to 30 day and one year mortality. DESIGN Prospective study of 1138 patients with atrial fibrillation from the GUSTO-III trial. INTERVENTIONS Of the 1138 study patients, 317 (28%) received an...

This study assessed the antiarrhythmic activity of amiloride in 35 patients with inducible sustained ventricular tachycardia. Patients had failed to respond to 3.6 +/- 1.0 antiarrhythmic drugs. Ventricular tachycardia was reproducibly induced by programmed electrical stimulation in all patients at the baseline study. Amiloride was given at 10 and 20 mg/day p.o. on a twice-daily schedule that ac...

Several groups of drugs have been shown to possess antiarrhythmic activity. Some of them e.g. quinidine, procainamide, local anaesthetics, &beta;-receptor blocking agents and diphenylhydantoin etc. have achieved a clinical status as antiarrhythmic drugs. Diphenyl hydantoin (dilantin) an anticonvulsant has been successfully employed for the supression of ventricular arrhythmias due to digitalis ...

BACKGROUND Atrial arrhythmias are common early after atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. We hypothesized that empirical antiarrhythmic drug (AAD) therapy for 6 weeks after AF ablation would reduce the occurrence of atrial arrhythmias. METHODS AND RESULTS We randomized consecutive patients with paroxysmal AF undergoing ablation to empirical antiarrhythmic therapy (AAD group) or no antiarrhythmi...

Human ether-a-go-go-related gene (HERG) potassium channels are one primary target for the pharmacological treatment of cardiac arrhythmias by class III antiarrhythmic drugs. These drugs are characterized by high antiarrhythmic efficacy, but they can also initiate life-threatening "torsade de pointes" tachyarrhythmias. Recently, it has been suggested that combining potassium and calcium channel ...

A variety of arrhythmias can occur after heart transplantation (HTx). Hearts selected to be donated for HTx should be in good condition and generally beat in sinus rhythm (SR). Absence or loss of SR after HTx can be due to any reason and can lead to serious hemodynamic problems. Ischemia reperfusion injury, unbalanced serum electrolytes and re-warming of cold myocardial tissue are known to init...

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