Background: The choice of cardiac resynchronization therapy device, with (CRT-D) or without (CRT-P) a defibrillator, in patients with heart failure largely depends on the physician׳s discretion, because it has not been established which subjects benefit most from a defibrillator.
Methods: We examined the annual trend of CRT device implantations between 2006 and 2014, and evaluated the factors related to the device selection (CRT-D or CRT-P) for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death in patients with heart failure by analyzing the Japan Cardiac Device Treatment Registry (JCDTR) database from January 2011 and August 2015 (CRT-D, n=2714; CRT-P, n=555).
Results: The proportion of CRT-D implantations for primary prevention among all the CRT-D recipients was more than 70% during the study period. The number of CRT-D implantations for primary prevention reached a maximum in 2011 and decreased gradually between 2011 and 2014, whereas CRT-P implantations increased year by year until 2011 and remained unchanged in recent years. Multivariate analysis identified age (odds ratio [OR] 0.92, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90-0.95, P<0.0001), male sex (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.28-3.11, P<0.005), reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (OR 0.96, 95% CI 0.94-0.98, P<0.0001), and non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (NSVT) (OR 2.85, 95% CI 1.87-4.35, P<0.0001) as independent factors favoring the choice of CRT-D.
Conclusions: Younger age, male sex, reduced LVEF, and a history of NSVT were independently associated with the choice of CRT-D for primary prevention of sudden cardiac death in patients with heart failure in Japan.
Keywords: Cardiac resynchronization therapy; Defibrillator; Heart failure; Primary prevention.