Auto-entrainment risk assessment in heart failure.

Background: Risk assessment studies use a suite of nominally independent noninvasive heart rate metrics, often brought together in a statistical model to compute a risk score. The ongoing need to noninvasively identify the higher risk patients requiring more invasive investigations/interventions drives the search for better noninvasive predictive metrics, with increased sensitivity. Many varieties of autoregulatory malfunction occur within the cardiovascular system; thus, it seems a daunting challenge to build predictive models that account for all potential modes of failure.

Ventricular high-rate episodes in pacemaker diagnostics identify a high-risk subgroup of patients with tachy-brady syndrome.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the frequency and clinical significance of ventricular high-rate (VHR) episodes (ventricular rate >162 bpm) in patients with symptomatic bradycardia and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF).

Background: Newer pacemakers have enhanced diagnostic features that permit detection and storage of detailed information about the frequency, duration, and time of onset of multiple episodes of AF, atrial tachycardia (AT), and ventricular tachycardia (VT). However, the prevalence and prognostic value of AF associated with rapid ventricular rates in the pacemaker population are unknown.