A novel non-invasive electrocardiographic imaging technique facilitates the preprocedural diagnostic workup of patients with infrequent ventricular arrhythmias

Abstract

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background Catheter ablation (CA) fails in considerable numbers of patients with ventricular arrhythmias (VAs). Possible reasons include absence and non-inducibility, multifocal origin and anatomically difficult locations of premature ventricular complexes (PVCs) and ventricular tachycardias (VTs). A novel non-invasive electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) diagnostic tool may help to determine the best treatment strategy of these patients. Purpose To evaluate outpatient ECGI (VIVO, View Into Ventricular Onset, Catheter Precision, NJ) to tailor treatment of patients with infrequent ventricular arrhythmias referred for CA. Methods Thirteen patients in an outpatient setting with VAs were included in this pilot-study. All patients underwent ECGI mapping using VIVO. It is a novel technique that localize the origin of VAs using a combination of 12-lead ECG and a patient specific 3D anatomical reconstruction of the heart and thorax using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or cardiac computed tomography imaging (CT). The technique is based on virtual simulation of pace-mapping and has a unique feature that the imaging can be performed independently from recording of the arrhythmias. Suitability for ablation was based on the VIVO mapping in this cohort. Results Among the 13 patients enrolled (10 female, 3 male, age 39 ±15 years), a total of 16 PVC/VT morphologies were analyzed using VIVO. Ten of them had a low PVC burden (<8%). Ten patients underwent pre-procedural cardiac MRI and 4 had CT imaging. Seven of the patients had structurally normal hearts, while the remaining 6 had non-ischemic cardiomyopathy. Based on the VIVO mapping findings the patients were divided in two groups. Group A: 7 patients in whom ablation was considered suitable. In this group a VIVO based anatomy CA was attempted in 3 patients for PVCs. Two out of these were successful. Three patients were offered CA but was declined by patient decision (suboptimal balance between burden, complaints and the offered success rates without procedural hard endpoint). Another patient is offered and is waiting for CA. The other group B: 6 patients in whom VIVO mapping was consistent with an unacceptable chance for treatment success were not offered CA. This included: 4 patients with a multifocal origin and a low burden of PVCs. One patient had different diagnosis (atrial fibrillation) and another had no PVC’s during 12-lead ECG monitoring. Conclusions Non-invasive ECGI pace-map is a unique tool that can identify the origin of infrequent VAs in an outpatient clinical setting in order to screen out patients not feasible for CA. Low burden PVCs maybe attempted to be ablated when the source is clearly associated of certain anatomical structures.