Azygos vein lead implantation: a therapeutic option for elevated defibrillation threshold.

The evaluation of the defibrillation threshold (DFT) during the implantation of a cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is an important stage of the procedure, as a high DFT can be found in up to 16% of patients. We report a patient with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) submitted to a biventricular ICD implantation. During the procedure, the patient showed a high DFT and showed to be resistant to usual therapeutic modalities.

Postpartum torsades de pointes and long QT syndrome.

This article reports the case of a puerperal patient admitted with diagnosis of urinary tract infection and heart failure. This condition evolved with torsades de pointes ventricular arrhythmias, then, hypokalemia, and use of Ciprofloxacin. Ventricular arrhythmias did not present any improvement after potassium and magnesium replacement, but after implantation of temporary pacemaker, this condition showed signs of improvement.