The incidence of arrhythmias in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit

A pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) manages critically ill children and adults with congenital or acquired heart disease. These patients are at increased risk for arrhythmias. The purpose of this study was to prospectively evaluate the incidence of arrhythmias in a pediatric CICU patient population. All patients admitted to the CICU at the Cardiac Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia between December 1, 1997, and November 30, 1998, were evaluated prospectively from CICU admission to hospital discharge via full disclosure telemetry reviewed every 24 hours. Arrhythmias reviewed included nonsustained and sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT), nonsustained and sustained supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), atrial flutter and fibrillation, junctional ectopic tachycardia, and complete heart block. We reviewed 789 admissions consisting of 629 patients (age range, 1 day-45.5 years; median, 8.1 months). Hospital stay ranged from 1 to 155 days (total of 8116 patient days). Surgical interventions (n = 602) included 482 utilizing cardiopulmonary bypass. During the study period, there were 44 deaths [44/629 patients (7.0%)], none of which were directly attributable to a primary arrhythmia. The operative mortality was 5.1%. Overall, 29.0% of admissions had one or more arrhythmias the most common arrhythmia was nonsustained VT (18.0% of admissions), followed by nonsustained SVT (12.9% of admissions). Patients admitted to a pediatric CICU have a high incidence of arrhythmias, most likely associated with their underlying pathophysiology and to the breadth of medical and surgical interventions conducted.