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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

A New Single Chamber Implantable Defibrillator with Atrial Sensing: A Practical Demonstration of Sensing and Ease of Implantation
Published on: February 28, 2012
Optimal combination of discriminators for differentiating ventricular from supraventricular tachycardia by
Michael Glikson1, Charles D Swerdlow, Osnat T Gurevitz
1Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, Tel Hashomer, Israel. mglikson@post.tau.ac.il
Unlabelled:
Discriminators for ventricular/supraventricular tachycardia.
Introduction:
Dual-chamber implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) use discriminators to differentiate between supraventricular tachycardias (SVTs) and ventricular tachycardias (VT), the accuracy of which may depend on the type and method used. ICDs can combine rate branching of tachyarrhythmias according to their A:V relationship with two SVT-VT discriminators in each rate branch, using ANY (either) or ALL (both) logic. Our goal was to determine the optimal discriminator combination.
Methods:
Stored electrogram data from 596 spontaneous tachyarrhythmias from 203 patients with Photon DR ICDs were analyzed. Arrhythmias are first classified by the relationship of atrial and ventricular rates (rate branches VA) followed by additional discriminators: morphology and/or sudden onset if V=A; morphology and/or interval stability if V
Results:
Sensitivity and specificity were calculated for all spontaneous episodes in each analysis. V=A branch: ALL logic produced unacceptably low sensitivity, whereas morphology provided only similar sensitivity but better specificity than ANY logic. A>V branch: ANY logic provided adequate sensitivity. The combination of morphology only in V=A with interval stability or morphology (ANY logic) in V
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