Skip to content
CardioLogIQ
2022

ESC 2022 Guidelines — Ventricular Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death

2022 ESC Guidelines for the management of patients with ventricular arrhythmias and the prevention of sudden cardiac death

This is the largest topic in the bank, and the breadth is the guideline's own. It runs from the public health end — bystander response, defibrillator availability, volunteer alerting — through acute management to inherited arrhythmia syndromes and the evaluation of families after an unexplained death.

The acute questions turn on one discipline: a wide-complex tachycardia of unknown mechanism is treated as ventricular. Calcium channel blockers are excluded. Prophylactic antiarrhythmic therapy in the acute coronary setting has a Class III statement attached, beta-blockers excepted.

Device indications are examined as sequences rather than single thresholds — optimal medical therapy, a reassessment interval, then the implant decision. The channelopathies have drug-specific answers worth knowing exactly: non-selective beta-blockade in long QT syndrome, and the investigations that are explicitly not indicated there.

What is in the bank

356 active questions. Class and level follow the recommendation each question is built from.

Class of recommendation

Class I
173
Class IIa
115
Class IIb
46
Class III
22

Level of evidence

Level A
12
Level B
108
Level C
236

Sample questions

Ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death · 2022Class IIILevel B
A 73-year-old man presents with palpitations that began abruptly two hours ago, shortly after a large lunch. His pulse is 186 beats per minute, his blood pressure is 112/68 mmHg and he is alert and speaking in full sentences. The electrocardiogram shows a regular wide-complex tachycardia with a QRS duration of 140 ms; a tracing from last year shows sinus rhythm with a right bundle branch block of the same morphology, which makes the resident wonder whether this is a supraventricular rhythm conducted aberrantly. He had an anterior myocardial infarction eleven years ago and has severe emphysema with chronic carbon dioxide retention. The anaesthetist judges sedation to carry a substantial risk in the next few hours. Which treatment is appropriate?
Pick the single best answer.
Start the 7-day trialPricing

Related guidelines