[Clinical pathway for electrical storm treatment in a healthcare network modeling. A proposal from ANMCO Tuscany]

Electrical storm (ES) is defined as three or more episodes of sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) or fibrillation (VF) within 24 h, or an incessant VT/VF lasting more than 12 h. It usually occurs in implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) recipients, and three or more device interventions are typically used for the diagnosis. ES incidence is particularly high in case of ICD implanted in secondary prevention (10-30%), with recurrences occurring in up to 80% of patients. A comprehensive evaluation of triggers, predictive factors of high-risk patients and an appropriate management of the acute/subacute and chronic phases are pivotal to reduce mortality and recurrences. Medical therapy with antiarrhythmic and anesthetic drugs, with appropriate device reprogramming and neuroaxial modulation if needed, are used to cool down the ES, which should ultimately be treated with ablation therapy or, less often, with an alternative treatment, such as denervation or stereotactic radiosurgery. An optimization of the clinical pathway in a network modeling is crucial to achieve the best treatment, eventually addressing patients to centers with VT ablation programs, and identifying the most challenging procedures and the most critical patients that should be treated only in high-volume tertiary centers. In this paper, we present a proposal of healthcare network modeling for ES treatment in a regional setting.