[Anti-arrhythmic therapy of patients with recurrent ventricular tachycardias after prior myocardial infarction].

An examination of 30 patients with paroxysmal ventricular tachycardias following prior myocardial infarction showed that drug tests by using invasive and noninvasive monitoring of the action of antiarrhythmic agents allowed beneficial pharmacotherapy to be chosen for their long-term use in 20% of this category of patients. The remaining 80% were resistant to antiarrhythmic drug therapy, which was associated with the highly unfavourable prognosis confirmed by 50% mortality on a 2-year follow-up. Open heart surgeries were performed in 3 cases refractory to antiarrhythmic therapy. The operations aimed at liquidating the source of tachycardia produced a full antiarrhythmic effect. The application of this method for treating patients with postinfarction cardiosclerosis is limited by severe organic heart lesion that determines the high risk of operative mortality. This makes it necessary to intensively develop other methods of non-drug therapy providing less surgical intervention and to introduce them into practice.