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Prevention of arrhythmias by flecainide after noncardiac thoracic surgery.
Journal article

Prevention of arrhythmias by flecainide after noncardiac thoracic surgery.

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  • 1989-08-01
Published in:
  • The Annals of thoracic surgery. - 1989
Adult
Aged
Arrhythmias, Cardiac
Electrocardiography
Flecainide
Humans
Middle Aged
Monitoring, Physiologic
Random Allocation
Thoracic Surgery
English Cardiac arrhythmias are a frequent complication after thoracic operations. The prophylactic value of flecainide administered as a constant-rate, intravenous infusion (0.15 mg/kg/h) after a loading dose (2 mg/kg) was tested in a randomized, placebo-controlled study in 30 patients using Holter monitoring during the first 72 hours after operation. A high incidence of atrial and complex ventricular arrhythmias was observed in the placebo-treated group, with a clear predominance in patients undergoing left thoracotomy. Antiarrhythmic drugs had to be added in 6 patients in the placebo-treated group (n = 16), but in none in the flecainide-treated group (n = 14) (p less than 0.01). The preventive effect of flecainide was observed at serum concentrations in the middle of the therapeutic range (409 ng/mL) without side effects. It is concluded that flecainide administration effectively reduced or prevented cardiac arrhythmias after thoracic operations.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/277728
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