Antiarrhythmic drugs for ischemic heart disease

Therapy with antiarrhythmic drugs may offer the best immediate hope for reducing the large number of deaths due to arrhythmias among patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD). For the prevention of sudden death from ventricular fibrillation, chronic use of these drugs is reasonable in high-risk ambulatory IHD patients, in any patient in whom acute myocardial infarction (MI) is suspected, and in some patients hospitalized for acute MI. However, the effectiveness and possible risks of administering antiarrhythmic drugs in these settings remain essentially unknown. The selection of IHD patients who will benefit most from prophylactic antiarrhythmic drug therapy, the best times for starting and stopping this therapy, and the choice of drug cannot yet be guided by controlled clinical experience. Carefully controlled prospective studies of the beneficial and untoward effects of different drugs in IHD patients are urgently required to provide better guidelines for the clinical use of these potentially life-saving drugs.