Ventricular tachycardia epidemiology


 * Associate Editor-in Chief: Avirup Guha, M.B.B.S.[mailto:avirup.guha@gmail.com]

Overview
Ventricular tachycardia is a major cause of Sudden cardiac death.

Epidemiology and Demographics

 * Sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) is an important cause of 150,000 to 300,000 out of hospital sudden deaths that occur annually in the US.


 * The most common cause of wide complex tachycardia(WCT) is ventricular tachycardia (VT), which accounts for 80% of all cases of WCT. Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) with aberrancy accounts for 15% to 20% of WCTs. SVTs with bystander preexcitation and antidromic atrioventricular reentrant tachycardia (AVRT) account for 1% to 6% of WCTs.


 * However, the underlying substrate varies: ischemic heart disease in 75–80% cases; idiopathic cardiomyopathy in 10–15%; and 1–2% due to rare monogenic mutations in cardiac ion channels or associated proteins.


 * Brugada Syndrome may account for up to 50% of all SCDs in young individuals without structural heart disease.


 * The prevalence of nonsustained VT detected by 24-hour Ambulatory ECGs was 4% in 98 elderly, disease-free individuals in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, 4% in 106 active elderly people, 2% in 50 elderly people without cardiovascular disease, 4% in 729 elderly women and 13% in 643 elderly men in the Cardiovascular Health Study, 3% in 135 elderly men and 2% in 297 elderly women without cardiovascular disease, 9% in 385 elderly men and 8% in 806 elderly women with hypertension, valvular disease, or cardiomyopathy, 6% in 395 elderly men and 15% in 771 elderly women with coronary artery disease (CAD), and 5% in a well population of 80 year olds in the Bronx Longitudinal Aging Study.


 * The prevalence of complex ventricular arrhythmia in elderly people in these studies was 50%, 31%, 20%, 16% in women and 28% in men, 31% in men and 30% in women without cardiovascular disease, 54% in men and 55% in women with hypertension, valvular disease, or cardiomyopathy, and 69% in men and 68% in women with CAD.