Factors relating to late sudden death in patients having aortic valve replacement

The preoperative and postoperative characteristics of a group of 16 patients who died unexpectedly and a control group of 52 late survivors with aortic protheses are reviewed. There were no preoperative differences between the groups for duration of congestive heart failure, electrocardiographic findings, cardiothoracic ratio, or hemodynamic findings. However, on the standard electrocardiogram postoperatively, there were more ventricular arrhythmias in the patients who died suddenly (7 of 16 or 44%) compared with the survivors (5 of 49 or 10%) (p less than 0.05). There were more patients with congestive failure in the study group (10 of 16 or 62%) compared with the controls (4 of 52 or 8%) (p less than 0.05). Patients exhibiting these findings are at risk of sudden death. Arrhythmia monitoring prior to discharge may also be helpful in selecting patients for antiarrhythmia treatment.