Prophylactic Procaine Amide in Myocardial Infarction

Of patients with myocardial infarction who survive long enough to be admitted to hospital, ten per cent die suddenly and often unexpectedly Whereas deaths from overwhelming shock, congestive cardiac failure, or cardiac rupture are usually inevitable, due to the massive destruction of cardiac muscle, the sudden deaths may be more tragic in that they may occur in patients with apparently good cardiac reserve who might otherwise have made good functional recoveries. Most of them probably die of ventricular fibrillation which is the cause of sudden death after experimental coronary occlusion In man the diagnosis is usually inferential as there are no diagnostic signs at autopsy, but ventricular fibrillation is found on the rare occasions when such patients die suddenly during cardiographic examination