Right ventricular pacing is an independent predictor for ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation occurrence and heart failure events in patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator

There is increasing evidence that right ventricular (RV) pacing may have detrimental effects by increasing morbidity and mortality for heart failure in implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) patients. In this study we prospectively tested the hypothesis that cumulative RV pacing increases ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation (VT/VF) occurrence (primary endpoint) and hospitalization and mortality for heart failure (secondary endpoint) in a predominantly secondary prophylactic ICD patient population.