Post Left Ventricular Assist Device Implantation Ventricular Tachycardia

Ventricular Tachycardia is a cardiac arrythmia which causes the ventricles to beat faster than supposed to. It is often caused by scar tissue and can be life threatening in patients with severe cardiomyopathy especially if their VT results in hemodynamic instability (abnormal blood pressures). Patients with severe cardiomyopathy and heart failure often receive an Left Ventricular Assist Device instead of or while they wait for a transplant. It is often thought that the reason many LVAD recipients tend to have post-procedural VT is because of how invasive the procedure is. Our experiment seeks to prove that pre-procedural VT is a bigger factor in persistent post-procedural VT than the procedure itself and that VT ablation shortly after LVAD implant can prevent post-procedural VT. Until now, all of our data has been collected retrospectively. We are in the process of shifting this into a prospective study for which subjects will be carefully selected to make sure they meet all of the requirements such as time between LVAD implant and ablation and presence of pre-procedural VT. Of the retrospective cases examined, most patients tolerated the ablation well and VT wasn’t present after 30 days. This study is still ongoing and final results are expected in 2022.