Surgical ablation of ventricular tachycardia: improved results with a map-directed regional approach.
To determine whether a regional approach to surgery for ventricular tachycardia would improve on the results of previously reported methods of endocardial resection, an analysis was performed of our surgical experience over a 5 year period. Of 46 consecutive patients operated on for recurrent sustained ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation, 39 patients with ischemic heart disease underwent subendocardial resection and/or cryoablation. The mean age of the patients was 61 +/- 8 (SD) years, the mean left ventricular ejection fraction was 32 +/- 11%, and the mean number of ineffective antiarrhythmic drugs was 3.8 +/- 1.2 per patient. In 35 of 39 patients in whom mapping data were obtainable, 56 (86%) tachycardias had earliest sites of activation in the left ventricle and nine (14%) had earliest sites in the right ventricle. Ten patients had 14 tachycardias (21%) mapped to areas outside visible dense scar. Of these 35 patients, 10 underwent localized subendocardial resection and 25 underwent a regional procedure in which all areas activated before the surface QRS during ventricular tachycardia were excised and/or cryoablated. In the operative survivors of electrophysiologically guided surgery, three of eight (38%) patients with the localized and one of 24 (4%) patients who underwent the regional procedure had recurrence of ventricular tachycardia during a follow-up period of 1 to 59 (mean 22 +/- 17) months (p = .04). The favorable outcome of regional surgery was not influenced by the presence of multiple morphologies in 54%, disparate sites of origin in 29%, or inferior wall foci in 46% of patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
J
J
Krafchek
G M
GM
Lawrie
R
R
Roberts
S A
SA
Magro
C R
CR
Wyndham
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*; D003452:Cryosurgery; D004594:Electrophysiology; D004699:Endocardium / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D007430:Intraoperative Care; D007432:Intraoperative Period; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012008:Recurrence; D013610:Tachycardia / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*