Improved programming of implantable cardioverter defibrillators resulted in a 79% reduction in the risk of inappropriate therapy and a 55% reduction in the risk of death in Boston Scientific Corp.’s MADIT-RIT randomized clinical trial, findings that "will have immediate clinical significance for physicians who implant and manage these devices," according to Kenneth Stein, chief medical officer of Boston Scientific's Cardiac Rhythm Management Group. The results were presented Nov. 6 at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Los Angeles and published online the same day in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The multicenter, international trial randomly assigned 1,500 primary-prevention patients to three different programming configurations to see if setting the devices to fire at a higher heart-rate threshold or after a longer delay than with conventional programming would reduce a patient's risk of experiencing a first instance of inappropriate antitachycardia pacing or shocks. (See Also see "Research In Brief" - Medtech Insight, 12 October, 2009..) The investigators, led by Arthur J. Moss, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, N.Y
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