Surgical coronary revascularization in survivors of prehospital cardiac arrest: its effect on inducible ventricular arrhythmias and long-term survival

Cardiac Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02114.

In a selected subgroup of 50 survivors of cardiac arrest, the impact of surgical myocardial revascularization on inducible arrhythmias, arrhythmia recurrence and long-term survival was examined. The effects of several clinical, angiographic and electrophysiologic variables on arrhythmia recurrence and survival were also analyzed. All patients had a prehospital cardiac arrest and severe operable coronary artery disease and underwent myocardial revascularization. Preoperative electrophysiologic study was performed in 41 patients; 33 (80%) had inducible ventricular arrhythmias. Of 42 patients studied off antiarrhythmic drugs postoperatively, 19 (45%) had inducible ventricular arrhythmias. Thirty patients with inducible arrhythmias preoperatively underwent postoperative testing off antiarrhythmic drugs; arrhythmia induction was suppressed in 14 (47%). By multivariate analysis, the induction of ventricular fibrillation at the preoperative electrophysiologic study was the only significant predictor of induced ventricular arrhythmia suppression by coronary surgery (p less than 0.001). Inducible ventricular fibrillation was not present postoperatively in any of the 11 patients who manifested this arrhythmia preoperatively. In contrast, inducible ventricular tachycardia persisted in 80% of patients in whom preoperative testing induced this arrhythmia. Patients were followed up for 39 +/- 29 months. There were four arrhythmia recurrences; one was fatal. There were three nonsudden cardiac deaths and three noncardiac deaths. By life-table analysis, 5 year survival, cardiac survival and arrhythmia-free survival rates were 88%, 98%, and 88%, respectively. Depressed left ventricular ejection fraction and advanced age were predictive of death (p = 0.015 and 0.026, respectively) and cardiac death (p = 0.037 and 0.05, respectively).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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