| Title |
Temporal association between intrathoracic impedance and tachyarrhythmia occurrence |
| Authors |
Butkuvienė, Monika ; Petrėnas, Andrius ; Sološenko, Andrius ; Olsson, Anneli ; Borgquist, Rasmus ; Platonov, Pyotr G |
| DOI |
10.1111/jce.70526 |
| Full Text |
|
| Is Part of |
Journal of cardiovascular electrophysiology.. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley. 2026, Early access, p. 1-8.. ISSN 1045-3873. eISSN 1540-8167 |
| Keywords [eng] |
atrial fibrillation ; cardiac implantable electronic devices ; temporal association ; thoracic fluid accumulation ; ventricular tachycardia |
| Abstract [eng] |
BACKGROUND: This study examined whether daily intrathoracic impedance is temporally associated with the occurrence of atrial fibrillation (AF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT). METHODS: This retrospective cohort study included 117 patients with cardiac implantable devices, followed for a median of 668 days, corresponding to 89 637 person-days. Recurrent AF occurred in 28% of patients (mean AF burden 0.27), while 773 VT episodes occurred in 15% of patients. Daily intrathoracic impedance, expressed relative to a reference impedance, was analyzed to identify events of impedance decrease and increase. The temporal association between impedance events and tachyarrhythmia burden was quantified using a patient-specific relational strength measure (γ), which compares post-event and pre-event tachyarrhythmia burden. RESULTS: For impedance decreases, event-related γ for AF was higher than control γ computed for randomly placed events (median 0.68 vs. 0.48, p = 0.04). For VT, event-related γ did not differ significantly from control γ (six patients; median 0.52 vs. 0.21, p = 0.82). No significant differences were observed for impedance increases in either the AF or VT analysis. In the pooled episode-level analysis, an impedance decrease was associated with a shorter time to VT occurrence than an impedance increase (median 4 vs. 7 days, p < 0.001), with 48% of VT episodes occurring within 3 days after an impedance decrease. CONCLUSION: A decrease in intrathoracic impedance is temporally associated with subsequent AF occurrence and, at the episode level, with a shorter time to VT. These findings suggest that daily intrathoracic impedance may provide information on short-term changes preceding tachyarrhythmia occurrence. |
| Published |
Hoboken, NJ : Wiley |
| Type |
Journal article |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2026 |
| CC license |
|
