Value of pre-hospital discharge defibrillation testing in recipients of implanted cardioverter defibrillators.

Opinions vary regarding the need to perform defibrillation testing prior to hospital discharge in recipients of state-of-the-art cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Our protocol is to perform predischarge ICD testing 1 day after implant. This report includes 682 consecutive implants.

Lead stuck (frozen) in header: salvage by bone cutter versus other techniques. jfisher@montefiore.org.

It is occasionally difficult to disconnect leads from headers at the time of pulse generator replacement without injuring the fragile leads. Over a 2.5-year period we encountered this problem in six cases (1.