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Part of the book series: Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine ((DICM,volume 81))

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Abstract

If there were no danger of sudden death (SD), ventricular arrhythmias (VA) would have little importance in practice. If we consider SD to be death that presents within an hour of the onset of the first symptoms, there is one SD per minute in the United States [1, 2]. Although in Spain there are no exact statistics on the number of SD, the estimation in that there are more than 30,000 per year. Eighty to ninety per cent of the SD are of cardiac origin and of these 80–90% are due to ventricular fibrillation precipitated by premature ventricular complexes (PVC). For this reason, anything related to PVC treatment is important. No study [3] has demonstrated that empirical administration of an antiarrhythmic drug reduces the risk of SD.

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© 1988 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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de Luna, A.B. (1988). Introduction. In: de Luna, A.B., Betriu, A., Permanyer, G. (eds) Therapeutics in Cardiology. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1333-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1333-2_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-7094-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-1333-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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