May fever trigger ventricular fibrillation?

The clinical precipitants of ventricular fibrillation (VF) remain poorly understood. Clinical factors such as hypoxemia, acidosis or electrolyte imbalance, drug-related toxicity, autonomic nervous system disorders as well as viral myocarditis have been proposed to be associated with sudden cardiac death particularly in patients with structural heart disease. However, In the Brugada syndrome, concurrent febrile illness has been reported to unmask the electrocardiographic features of the Brugada syndrome and be associated with an increased propensity for VF. More recently, a febrile illnesses of infectious etiology was associated to polymorphic ventricular tachycardia or VF in patients with normal hearts and without known repolarization abnormality. In this review we detail this phenomenon and its putative mechanisms.