[Non-pharmacological treatment of ventricular tachycardia (anti-arrhythmic surgery excluded)]

There has been real change in the treatment of VT in recent years including the promotion of non-medical methods. In the large group of non-responders to medical therapy, only a minority offers possibilities of radical surgical treatment of VT. In the others, two options remain: ablative methods and implantable automatic cardioverter defibrillators. The destruction of foci of tachycardia by catheterisation necessitates prior investigation of the ventricular endocardium with recordings of endocardial electrograms during VT. Criteria defining the zone for ablation are two-fold: either the zone of earliest endocardial depolarisation or the exit zone (generally preceding the tachycardia QRS complexes by 20 to 30 ms). The second is the zone of slow conduction which corresponds to the cardiac substrate in which the tachycardia arises. In the absence of satisfactory mapping, localisation of the ablation target may be performed by stimulating the endocardium at different points with the aim of reproducing the tachycardia QRS complexes. Two types of physical agents have been used for ablation: high energy electric shocks and, at present, radiofrequency currents. Complications of the procedure are rare: thromboembolism, cardiac rupture, cardiogenic shock in patients with initially poor hemodynamic conditions. Prevention of VT is obtained in over half the cases providing complementary antiarrhythmic therapy is prescribed. The other alternative is the implantable automatic defibrillator which is tending to take over the leading role in non-pharmacological treatment of VT. At first, these devices were exclusively defibrillators but nowadays they have anti-tachycardia functions which widen the indications to include subjects with sustained VT even in the absence of cardiac arrest.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)