Effect of congestive heart failure treatment on incidence and prognosis of ventricular tachyarrhythmias

Abstract

The prognosis for patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) is poor, with a mortality exceeding 50% within 5 years from diagnosis. This poor prognosis remains despite improved pharmacological therapy. Because the prevalence of sudden death among these patients is high, reported to exceed 40%, the prognostic importance of ventricular tachyarrhythmias has attracted much interest. Long-term electrocardiographic monitoring of patients with CHF reveals a high prevalence of ventricular premature beats, which in many patients occur frequently or are complex according to Lown criteria. Ventricular tachycardia (three or more consecutive beats) has been recorded in 40% or more of the patient population. Whether the occurrence and/or severity of ventricular tachyarrhythmia detected on Holter electrocardiograms relates to the subsequent prognosis is, however, debated. The occurrence of ventricular tachyarrhythmia may just be an expression of severely compromised left ventricular function, which, in turn, decides the subsequent outcome of the disease. Besides myocardial injury, patients with CHF have many factors that may contribute to the high prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias. Among these are elevated levels of plasma norepinephrine. Angiotensin II may increase the sensitivity to sympathetic nervous system arousal but also promotes renal loss of potassium and magnesium. Treatment with digitalis and diuretic drugs may provoke arrhythmias as well. Heart failure therapy may, however, also improve ventricular arrhythmias. Accordingly, it has been demonstrated that captopril therapy significantly reduces ventricular prematurity, compared with digitalis. In contrast, however, enalapril improvement of mortality was due to a reduction of progressive heart failure, with no difference seen in the incidence of sudden cardiac death (the CONSENSUS study).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)