A Case of Inappropriate Therapies for Atrial Flutter From a Subcutaneous ICD

• Main Authors: Roopa Tekkatte, Ahmed Hamoud, Claire Warren, James Barry
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2014-07-01
• Series: Indian Pacing and Electrophysiology Journal
• Subjects: Inappropriate Therapies; Atrial Flutter; Subcutaneous ICD
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0972629216307781

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy’s (HCM) association with sudden cardiac death is well recognised. The risk of sudden cardiac death is known to increase when there is a history of unexplained syncope, abnormal blood pressure response during exercise, severe left ventricular hypertrophy or a family history of unexplained death. Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) implantation has been widely used for primary and secondary prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD) in people with HCM. Subcutaneous ICD (S-ICD) therapy has been developed to overcome some of the problems associated with the transvenous leads used in conventional ICDs. In this article, we report the use of S-ICD in a patient with HCM and multiple risk factors for sudden cardiac death, this device had to be extracted due to recurrent inappropriate shocks caused by over sensing of atrial flutter and failure to treat a VT episode. We are not aware of any reports of inappropriate shocks caused by atrial flutter in people with a S-ICD.