Appropriate and inappropriate therapy in patients with single- or multi-chamber implantable cardioverter-defibrillators

ABSTRACT Background Inappropriate ICD therapy is associated with adverse outcome. Previous studies indicated that patients with a cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillator (CRT-D) might have a lower risk for inappropriate device activations than patients with a single (VVI) or dual chamber (DDD) ICD. Methods All ICD recipients from a university cardiac center between 2000 – 2015 were included in this analysis. Outcome parameters were incidence of appropriate and inappropriate therapy and overall mortality. Results A total of 1471 patients were analyzed: 629 (43%) patients with a VVI-ICD, 486 (33%) patients with a DDD-ICD and 356 (24%) with a CRT-D device. During an average follow-up of 4.1 ± 3.6 years, CRT-D patients had the lowest risk to receive at least one inappropriate shock therapy (p Conclusions CRT-D recipients have a significantly lower rate of appropriate shock therapy and a lower rate of inappropriate shock therapy. More frequent inappropriate therapies in VVI-ICD recipients may account for their higher overall mortality.