Wide QRS Complex Arrhythmia with Alternating QRS Morphology: What Is the Mechanism?

A 75-year-old man was admitted due to an electrical storm with appropriate recurrent implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) discharges. The patient had had an extensive anterolateral myocardial infarction with associated severe left ventricular dysfunction 10 years earlier (left ventricular ejection fraction, 25%), and an ICD was placed 9 years before admission for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death. A first invasive study induced up to five ventricular tachycardias and an extensive endocardial substrate ablation was performed. Despite intravenous β-blockers, general anesthesia and procainamide infusion, the patient continued to have recurrent episodes of very slow sustained ventricular tachycardia with a right bundle branch block pattern. In a subsequent invasive study, no mid-diastolic activity was found despite careful mapping during the induced clinical ventricular tachycardia and ablation attempts inside the apical endocardial scar were unsuccessful. A percutaneous epicardial approach with navigation system support (EnSite PrecisionTM Cardiac Mapping System v. 2.0, St. Jude Medical, St. Paul, MN, USA) without antiarrhythmic infusion was planned. A wide QRS complex rhythm with alternating QRS morphology was readily induced by epicardial ventricular pacing trains (Fig. 1, top) that elicited both arrhythmia QRS patterns with very long stimulus QRS intervals (Fig. 1, bottom). What is the possible mechanism of this arrhythmia? Do we need further pacing maneuvers during the arrhythmia to localize critical sites at which ablation pulses can predictably be successful?