Does primary prevention Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD) improve survival in older patients?
Primary prevention ICDs provide a survival benefit in older patients, though this benefit is attenuated with increasing age.
In this analysis, the survival benefit of the ICD exists but is attenuated with increasing age. The latter finding may be because of the higher burden of comorbid illness, competing causes of death, or limited sample size of older patients. There was no evidence that age modifies the association between ICD treatment and rehospitalization.
Hess et al. (Wed,) studied this question.