[Sudden death. Role of the electrophysiologic study]

At present, sudden death is considered a major health problem, DeBoer in 1935, recognized the clinical importance of ventricular fibrillation as the cause of sudden cardiac death. Sudden death due to cardiovascular problems has been established as one of the main causes of death in the developed countries and in developing countries as ours, where the deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases represent 15% of the total, exceeding other causes of death. The frequency of sudden death in our country is unknown, but more frequently we hear about cases of patients that have been reanimated for cardiac arrest; in the United States of America the frequency has been estimated between 400,000 at 500,000 per year although, recently, 250,000 at 300,000 events are being mentioned. It is convenient to comment that the causal arrhythmias are diverse and may vary depending on the underlying disease, although, generally, it can be pointed out that 80% of them are due to tachyarrhythmias. It's important to point out that there is a strong relationship between left ventricular dysfunction, the frequency of ventricular arrhythmias, and fatal cardiac events due to cardiac rhythm disturbances. The recommendations for electrophysiological studies are: 1) patients surviving cardiac arrest, occurring without evidence of an acute Q-wave myocardial infarction and 2) patients surviving cardiac arrest occurring more than 48 hours after the acute phase of myocardial infarction in the absence of a recurrent ischemic event.