Predictors of ventricular tachyarrhythmias in patients with coronary heart disease and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators

This review article is devoted to the identification of new predictors of the development of ventricular tachyarrhythmias (VA).The implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) in patients with the presence of risk factors is one of the main ways to prevent sudden cardiac death (SCD) due to VA. At the same time, data of 5 years of follow-up show that such kind of device is effective only in 15-25% of patients. For the reason that ICD implantation is associated with hospitalization and infection complications, there is a need to improve risk stratification and search for new prognostic markers of SCD and VA in order to reduce the number of inefficiently implanted ICDs and to reduce the costs of surgical intervention. In this regard, it is relevant to search for new predictors of VA development. In this field, it is promising to detect the disturbances of myocardial perfusion based on scintigraphy with thallium-199, to diagnose myocardial sympathetic innervation disorders by scintigraphy with iodine-131-labeled meta-iodine-benzylguanidine (MIBG), and to determine the levels of potential biochemical markers of myocardial fibrosis such as galectin-3 and ST2.