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Ventricular fibrillation: causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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Ventricular fibrillation is uncoordinated excitation in the ventricles, which does not lead to a useful reduction. Ventricular fibrillation leads to immediate loss of consciousness and death within a few minutes. Treatment is performed by performing cardiopulmonary support, including immediate defibrillation.
Causes of ventricular fibrillation
Fibrillation of the ventricles occurs due to the appearance of multiple foci of electrical activity with the formation of re-entry and manifests itself on the electrocardiogram with very frequent undulating waves on the contour, which are irregular in time and in form.
[Symptoms of ventricular fibrillation
Ventricular fibrillation is a rhythm that precedes cardiac arrest in approximately 70% of patients, resulting in ventricular aibrillation becoming a terminal event in many diseases. Moreover, most patients with ventricular fibrillation have a previous heart disease (usually ischemic heart disease, but also hypertrophic or dilated cardiomyopathy, right ventricular arrhythmogenic dysplasia or Brugada syndrome). In any pathology, the risk of ventricular fibrillation increases with electrolyte imbalance, acidosis, hypoxemia, or ischemia.
Ventricular fibrillation is much less common in children and adolescents who have more frequent manifestations of cardiac arrest asystole.
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Treatment of ventricular fibrillation
Treatment is performed by performing cardiopulmonary support, including defibrillation. The success rate for immediate defibrillation (within 3 min) is 95%, which shows no loss of pumping function of the heart before the development of ventricular fibrillation. If there is a disturbance in the pump function, immediate defibrillation is effective only in 30% of cases, and most patients die from lack of cardiac output before delivery to the clinic.
In patients who had ventricular fibrillation, not associated with reversible or transitory causes, the risk of recurrence of ventricular fibrillation in the future and, consequently, sudden death is high. Most of these patients need ICDF. Many people need the appointment of antiarrhythmic drugs in order to reduce the frequency of alleged episodes of ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation.