Does prophylactic ICD therapy reduce overall mortality in high-risk patients who have recently had a myocardial infarction?
Prophylactic ICD implantation early after acute myocardial infarction does not improve overall survival due to an offsetting increase in nonarrhythmic deaths.
Prophylactic ICD therapy does not reduce overall mortality in high-risk patients who have recently had a myocardial infarction. Although ICD therapy was associated with a reduction in the rate of death due to arrhythmia, that was offset by an increase in the rate of death from nonarrhythmic causes.
Hohnloser et al. (Thu,) studied this question.