Experimental evidence for proarrhythmic mechanisms of antiarrhythmic drugs.

Proarrhythmic versus antiarrhythmic mechanisms of cardiac resynchronization therapy

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has recently become an established therapy for patients with NYHA class III/IV systolic heart failure and prolonged QRS duration [1]. In addition to improvement in exercise capacity, NYHA symptoms class, and quality of life, evidence of the arrest or reversal of ventricular remodeling has been demonstrated [2]. A recent meta-analysis found that CRT reduce...

Risk of proarrhythmic events in the Atrial Fibrillation Follow-up Investigation of Rhythm Management (AFFIRM) study: a multivariate analysis.

OBJECTIVES This study examined the risk of proarrhythmic events in patients receiving antiarrhythmic drugs for treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) according to present-day safety guidelines. BACKGROUND Advances in understanding the proarrhythmic risk of antiarrhythmic drugs has led to development of safety guidelines for these agents. Such guidelines were used in the Atrial Fibrillation Fol...

Proarrhythmic effects of antiarrhythmic drugs during programmed ventricular stimulation in patients without ventricular tachycardia.

The proarrhythmic effects of class IA antiarrhythmic drugs were prospectively evaluated during programmed ventricular stimulation in 24 consecutive patients with frequent ventricular premature beats whose baseline study, performed while no antiarrhythmic drugs were being taken, showed no inducible sustained ventricular arrhythmias. No patient had nonsustained (greater than 5 beats) or sustained...

THE CLINICAL EVALUATION OF QT/QTc INTERVAL PROLONGATION AND PROARRHYTHMIC POTENTIAL FOR NON-ANTIARRHYTHMIC DRUGS

Comparative study on the proarrhythmic effects of some antiarrhythmic agents.

BACKGROUND A main side effect of antiarrhythmic drug therapy is the tendency of these drugs to promote arrhythmia within the therapeutic concentration range, i.e., the proarrhythmic activity of these drugs. However, a model for in vitro assessment, quantification, and comparison of proarrhythmic drug activities was still lacking, and only sparse data were available. METHODS AND RESULTS To ana...