Ventricular Premature Beats, Ventricular Tachycardia, and Sudden Cardiac Death: Identification of Patients and Drug Treatment

We now have a wide variety of potentially very effective means to approach the major health problem of SCD, but each carries its own intrinsic risk of worsening the problem. Consequently, it seems prudent to expend much greater effort in obtaining accurate risk assessment. The data from several investigators suggest that this is a real possibility and not something that must await future development. If we can attain accurate risk assessment, we should expect reduction in the study population size, improvement in the therapeutic risk/benefit to the individual patient who enters the study, and dramatic reduction in study costs, and we can also arrive at a quicker answer to the question of the effectiveness of the means of therapy under investigation. It also appears likely that a more rational and cost-effective approach to the problem of the SCD will be by means of an entire treatment strategy or program of management rather than by a single therapy.