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THE VENTRICULAR TACHYCARDIA

- Definition
- The Symptoms
- How to make the diagnosis?
- Tolerance of the tachycardia
- The Causes
- Treatment
- Ventricular fibrillation

VENTRICULAR FIBRILLATION

It corresponds to the fast and completely disorganized contraction of the ventricles. Every contraction ejects only little blood into the arteries.

Usually, the occurrence of a ventricular fibrillation is responsible for the occurrence of a sudden death.

If the patient had luck to be resuscitated, the electrocardiogram shows ventricular disorders of the polymorphic rhythm: the cause and the best antiarythmic drug must be found quickly, according to the management exposed in the ventricular tachycardia.

In the most critical cases, the recidivation in spite of the medicinal treatment must make the implantation of an implantable defibrillator considered. The implantation of an automatic implantable defibrillator is systematic in case of a tachycardia and/or a ventricular fibrillation in subjects with an ischemic cardiopathy (secondary to a myocardial infarction) associated to a dysfunction of the left ventricle (fraction of ejection below 40%).

Defibrillator, placed in the abdominal cavity.

Probe of defibrillation, placed in the heart and linked to the defibrillation case.

Now, most automatic implantable defibrillators are implanted like a cardiac pacemaker (the case is situated under the clavicle).

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File last reviewed on dec 18, 2011