Impact of early ventricular tachycardia ablation in patients with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Background: There is limited information on whether early catheter ablation (CA) for ventricular tachycardia (VT) is associated with better outcomes compared with alternative strategies in patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD).

Objective: The purpose of this article was to assess the efficacy of early VT CA in patients with ICD.

Methods: EMBASE, PubMed, and Cochrane were searched from inception to April 2022. Randomized controlled trials comparing the efficacy of early VT CA with control groups, both in patients with ICD, were included in the analysis. Data on effect estimates in individual studies were extracted and combined via random effects meta-analysis using the DerSimonian and Laird method, a generic inverse variance strategy.

Results: Nine randomized controlled trials with 1106 patients (n = 1018, 92.1% with ischemic cardiomyopathy and n = 88, 7.9% with nonischemic cardiomyopathy) were evaluated. VT CA was associated with reduced VT recurrences (odds ratio [OR] 0.64; P = .007), appropriate ICD shocks (OR 0.53; P = .002), ICD therapies (OR 0.54; P = .002), and cardiovascular hospitalization (OR 0.67; P = .004). However, no significant differences were observed in terms of mortality rate, heart failure hospitalization, and quality of life between the early VT CA and control groups.

Conclusion: Early CA was beneficial in reducing VT burden and ICD therapies. However, it did not affect mortality rate and quality of life. Since most patients in the included studies presented with ischemic cardiomyopathy, further studies on nonischemic cardiomyopathy should be conducted to validate if early CA has similar outcomes.