Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators or Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Devices in Older Patients

Prior studies in which investigators evaluated outcomes among older patients who received implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) have yielded somewhat contradictory results. In this study, researchers examined age-specific outcomes among a cohort of 27,000 patients (age, >18; median age, 70) with diagnoses of heart failure who underwent implantation of ICD or CRT devices during 2004 and 2005. The researchers used patient-level data from a performance improvement database created by several hundred U.S. hospitals.

Eighteen percent of patients were 80 or older. In-hospital mortality was 0.7% among patients younger than 80; it rose to 1.2% for patients who were 80 to 85 and to 2.2% for patient…