Right ventricular pressure changes during induced ventricular tachycardias predict clinical symptoms of cerebral hypoperfusion: implications for a reduction of unnecessary, painful ICD shocks

Background : ICD shocks occurring in conscious patients (as in the case of well-tolerated arrhythmias, electromagnetic interference, or oversensing) have a deleterious impact on the quality of life. We evaluated if a hemodynamic parameter, calculated from the right ventricular pressure (RVP) or systemic arterial pressure (AP) signals, could predict early clinical symptoms of cerebral hypoperfusion during induced ventricular tachycardias (VTs).
Methods and results: We analyzed 42 tolerated (no symptoms) and 30 untolerated (syncope or severe symptoms within 30 seconds from the onset) VTs, induced during electrophysiological study. The cycle length (CL) and the hemodynamic data (mean AP and RVP, arterial pulse pressure and RV pulse pressure, and maximum AP and RVP dP/dT) were automatically sampled in two VT epochs: the "detection" window, from beat 24 to 32, and the "preintervention" window, immediately before the first therapeutic attempt. Although the CL and all the hemodynamic parameters (expressed as % change versus pre-VT values) were significantly lower in untolerated versus tolerated VTs both at detection and preintervention (with the exception of the mean RVP which progressively increased in both groups), ROC analysis demonstrated that only the preintervention RV pulse pressure showed no overlap between groups, providing 100% sensitivity and positive predictive value.
Conclusions: The reduction of the RV pulse pressure is a better predictor of early cerebral symptoms than CL or other hemodynamic indexes during induced VTs. Since long-term RVP monitoring is feasible, this parameter could be incorporated into ICDs decisional path, in the perspective of reducing unnecessary, painful shocks.