[Atrial defibrillator]

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a frequent and costly health care problem representing the most common arrhythmia resulting in hospital admission. Total mortality and cardiovascular mortality are significantly increased in patients with AF compared to controls. In addition to symptoms of palpitations, patients with AF have an increased risk of stroke and may also develop decreased exercise tolerance and left ventricular dysfunction. All of these problems may be reversed with restoration and maintenance of sinus rhythm. External electrical cardioversion has been a remarkably effective and safe method for termination of this arrhythmia. Originally described by Lown et al. in 1963, it has been a well accepted mode of acute therapy. However, this technique requires general anesthesia or heavy sedation. Internal atrial defibrillation has been evaluated as an alternative approach to the external technique for over 2 decades. Recent studies have shown that low-energy internal atrial defibrillation using biphasic shocks is an effective and safe means in restoring sinus rhythm in patients with AF and should be considered especially in patients in whom external cardioversion attempts have failed. Implantable Atrial Defibrillator: Recently, a stand alone IAD, the Metrix System (models 3000 and 3020), has entered clinical investigation. Atrial defibrillation is accomplished by a shock delivered between electrodes in the right atrium and the coronary sinus. The right atrium lead has an active fixation in the right atrium. The coronary sinus lead has a natural spiral configuration for retention in the coronary sinus, and can be straightened with a stylet. Both leads are 7 French in diameter and the defibrillation coils are each 6 cm in length. The electrodes may be placed using separate leads, or very soon by using a single bipolar lead. A separate bipolar right ventricular lead is used for R wave synchronization and post shock pacing. The Metrix defibrillator can be used to induce AF by using R wave synchronous shocks and can store intracardiac electrograms (EGMs) for up to 2 minutes from the most recent 6 AF episodes. The device can be programmed into one of the following operating modes: fully automatic, patient activated, monitor mode, bradycardia pacing only, and off. As AF is not life-threatening, in the automatic mode the device is only intermittently active in detecting and treating AF, and this "sleep wake-up" cycle interval is programmable. The device employs extensive processing both for detection and R wave synchronization. In April 1996, the phase I Metrix multicenter clinical trial was started. As of May 1997, a total of 51 Metrix systems had been implanted as part of the phase I multicenter clinical trial. Preliminary data suggest that both defibrillation thresholds and electrograms are stable over time (implant to 3 months). Detection accuracy has been excellent (100% specificity, 92.3% sensitivity) and there have been no errors of R wave selection for synchronization. No proarrhythmias have resulted from over 3700 shocks delivered. The device is effective in electrically converting 96% of the spontaneous episodes of AF. In 27% of episodes several shocks were required because of early recurrence of AF. In 5 patients, the atrial defibrillator was removed: 2 infections, 1 cardiac tamponade, 1 permanent loss of telemetry, 1 patient required His-Bundle ablation because of frequent episodes of drug refractory AF with rapid ventricular response. Initial clinical experience under controlled conditions with the Metrix system suggests that the implantable atrial defibrillator may offer a therapeutic alternative for a subgroup of patients with drug refractory, symptomatic, long lasting, and infrequent episodes of AF. Further efforts must be undertaken to reduce the patient discomfort associated with internal atrial defibrillation in an attempt to make this new therapy acceptable to a larger patient population with AF. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)