A real-world experience of subcutaneous and transvenous implantable cardiac defibrillators-comparison with the PRAETORIAN study.

Background: PRAETORIAN is the first randomized controlled trial that demonstrated the noninferiority of subcutaneous ICD (S-ICD) in comparison with transvenous ICD (TV-ICD). We retrospectively reviewed electronic records of patients with ICD implanted over the past 6 years, with the primary objective to compare our real-world single tertiary center experience with the randomized data from the PRAETORIAN study.

Methods: Seventy S-ICD patients were compared with 197 TV-ICD patients, from July 2014 to June 2020 retrospectively, over a median period of 1304 days (296-2451 days). Primary composite endpoints included inappropriate shocks and device-related malfunctions.

Results: Patients with S-ICD implantation were younger than those who received TV-ICD (mean, 49.7 years vs 63.9 years,  < .001). About 31.4% of S-ICDs were implanted for secondary prevention, and 58.6% of S-ICD patients had ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM) with a median left ventricular ejection fraction of 32.5% (range: 10-67%). S-ICDs and TV-ICD had statistically similar inappropriate shocks (4.3% vs 4.6%,  = .78), device-related complications (11.4% vs 9.1%,  = .93), and the overall primary endpoints (15.7% vs 13.7%,  = .68). The findings remained the same even after age and gender adjustments and time-dependent analysis.

Conclusion: Although single-center experience with a small number of S-ICD patients, results of the PRAETORIAN study has been replicated in our real-world experience of S-ICD and TV-ICD implantations across diverse etiologies, indications, and age groups confirming the comparable performance of S-ICD and TV-ICD when implanted in selected patients.