What should I do if I have recurrent premature ventricular contractions and short bursts of ventricular tachycardia that do not resolve?

    In clinical work, we often encounter some patients with recurrent ventricular premature attacks, which may be accompanied by palpitations, chest tightness, dizziness and other symptoms, and in serious cases, obviously affect their normal work and life. Anti-arrhythmic drugs may be effective, but once the drugs are stopped or missed or taken late, ventricular premature recurrence occurs; worse still, the drugs cannot control their symptoms. In some patients with ventricular premature, in addition to ventricular premature, there are also episodes of ventricular premature paired, short-onset nonsustained ventricular tachycardia on 24hHolter ambulatory electrocardiography. These patients have more severe symptoms and may be at risk. How exactly should these patients be treated? A typical case is shared with you. Xu Jin, Department of Cardiology, Shanghai Renji Hospital The patient, female, 68 years old, had recurrent palpitations for more than 10 years, with chest tightness and dizziness during the attacks. In January 2012, the 24h Holter ECG showed more than 10,000 ventricular premature episodes, several hundred ventricular premature pairs, more than 1,000 short bouts of ventricular tachycardia, and more than 3-10 ventricular tachycardia episodes in a row. The patient was admitted to our hospital in September 2012. 24hHolter showed few ventricular premature, but dozens of ventricular premature pairs and more than 500 short bursts of ventricular tachycardia. During the admission period, the electrocardiogram showed frequent episodes of ventricular premature pairing and short paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia (see the attached figure). For ventricular arrhythmias of this site origin, drugs are often insensitive and are related to sympathetic excitation and catecholamine sensitivity. Untreated, long-term episodes can lead to the formation of tachycardia cardiomyopathy with certain risks, in addition to the patient’s self-perceived discomfort.     Cardiac radiofrequency ablation is the most suitable treatment for this type of patients and also enables the patient to obtain a radical cure. Therefore, we performed cardiac radiofrequency ablation on this patient. Prior to ablation, the patient was prone to precocious ventricular and short-onset ventricular tachycardia induced by catheter stimulation or application of isoproterenol. With the advanced 3-D scaler system, we performed ablation successfully with an agitated scaler at the right ventricular outflow tract septal location about 35 MS ahead of time and excellent unipolar scaler pattern. After ablation, repeated ventricular stimulation and 3 isoprostanes were given, and the patient did not have any further episodes of ventricular premature or short-onset ventricular tachycardia. After the ablation, the patient did not take any antiarrhythmic drugs and has not had any more ventricular premature and ventricular tachycardia episodes since the follow-up.    Our electrophysiology center is the first hospital in China to perform cardiac radiofrequency ablation, and has cured many patients with this type of ventricular premature and ventricular tachycardia. It is very gratifying for our doctors to see the patient’s smiling recovery. This typical case is presented here in detail in the hope that more patients with similar diseases will get the right treatment and recover.