Background, Outcome, and Clinical Implications of the Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial (MADIT)

Malignant ventricular tachyarrhythmias account for approximately one half of the estimated 1,000,000 people who die from cardiac causes annually. In 1990, the Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial (MADIT) group of investigators set out to determine if an implanted cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) would improve survival in patients with coronary disease at high risk for ventricular arrhythmias. The recently reported results from the MADIT study indicate that the ICD does save lives in high-risk coronary patients with left ventricular dysfunction and nonsustained ventricular tachycardia.[ 1 Moss AJ Hall WJ Cannom DS Daubert JP Higgins SL Klein H Levine JH Saksena S Waldo AL Wilber D Brown MW Heo M MADIT InvestigatorsImproved survival with an implanted defibrillator in patients with coronary disease at high risk for ventricular arrhythmia. N Engl J Med. 1996; 335: 1933-1940 Crossref PubMed Scopus (3532) Google Scholar ]