title: Ventricular automaticity as a predictor of sudden death in ischaemic heart disease.
abstract: Opinion has oscillated in the cardiology community regarding the significance of ventricular premature beats and non-sustained ventricular tachycardia as predictors of sudden cardiac death. Automaticity can be a marker of underlying structural heart disease. It is unclear whether the apparent association with sudden death is simply a reflection of this fact. Older data are unreliable as the populations studied probably had a high prevalence of unrecognized structural heart disease. Current risk stratification is imperfect. The balance of evidence suggests that automaticity does predict risk and it may have a role in risk-assessment algorithms, but at present the dataset is insufficient.
authors: St George's Hospital, Blackshaw Road, London SW17 0QT, UK. rbastiae@sgul.ac.uk
authors: Rachel
authors: R
authors: Bastiaenen
authors: Velislav
authors: V
authors: Batchvarov
authors: Mark M
authors: MM
authors: Gallagher
mesh_terms: D016757:Death, Sudden, Cardiac / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D017202:Myocardial Ischemia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012307:Risk Factors; D017180:Tachycardia, Ventricular / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality*; D018879:Ventricular Premature Complexes / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality*