Recurrent ventricular tachycardia after cardiac sympathetic denervation: Prolonged cycle length with improved...

Cardiac sympathetic denervation (CSD) is utilized for the management of ventricular tachycardia (VT) in structural heart disease when refractory to radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or when patient/VT characteristics are not conducive to RFA.

We studied consecutive patients who underwent CSD at our institution from 2009 to 2018 with VT requiring repeat RFA post-CSD. Patient demographics, VT/procedural characteristics, and outcomes were assessed.

Ninety-six patients had CSD, 16 patients underwent RFA for VT post-CSD. There were 15 male and 1 female patients with mean age of 54.2 ± 13.2 years. Fourteen patients had nonischemic cardiomyopathy. A mean of 2.0 ± 0.8 RFAs for VT was unsuccessful before the patient undergoing CSD. The median time between CSD and RFA was 104 days (interquartile range [IQR] = 15-241). The clinical VT cycle length was significantly increased after CSD both spontaneously on ECG and/or ICD interrogation (355 ± 73 ms pre-CSD vs. 422 ± 94 ms post-CSD, p = .001) and intraprocedurally (406 ± 86 ms pre-CSD vs. 457 ± 88 ms post-CSD, p = .03). Two patients had polymorphic and 14 had monomorphic VT (MMVT) pre-CSD, and all patients had MMVT post-CSD. The proportion of mappable, hemodynamically stable VTs increased from 35% during pre-CSD RFA to 58% during post-CSD RFA (p = .038). At median follow-up of 413 days (IQR = 43-1840) after RFA, eight patients had no further VT.

RFA for recurrent MMVT post-CSD is a reasonable treatment option with intermediate-term clinical success in 50% of patients. Clinical VT cycle length was significantly increased after CSD with associated improvement in mappable, hemodynamically tolerated VT during RFA.