Catheter Ablation in Patients with Electrical Storm. The Calm after the Tempest

pp. 543-546

Abstract

Background: Catheter ablation (CA) has been shown to be effective in patients with recurrent ventricular tachycardia (VT); however, its role in patients with electrical storm (ES) has not been studied in randomized trials.
Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze ES cases treated with CA.
Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of patients treated with CA for ES due to sustained monomorphic VT (SMVT). Procedure success was defined as lack of inducible VT at the end of ablation, partial success as the induction of non-clinical VT, and failure as inducible clinical VT.
Results: Sixteen procedures were performed in 14 patients: 10 successful, 3 partially successful, and 3 failures. All patients were free from ventricular arrhythmia immediately after ablation. Ten patients (71.4%) were free from VT and 86.7% free from ES [8 (3–30)-month follow-up]. Five patients (35.7%) died from causes unrelated to arrhythmia.
Conclusions: Catheter ablation is associated with acute suppression of VT in all patients with ES due to SMVT and with a recurrence-free outcome in most of them.