Failures of epicardial and transvenous leads for implantable cardioverter defibrillators

Abstract Lead failures constitute a major risk for patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). However, data about the incidence and patterns of ICD-lead failures in a larger population are lacking. We analyzed the short-term and midterm performance of 27 epicardial and 103 nonthoracotomy ICD-lead systems during a follow-up period of 36 ± 21 months and 22 ± 10 months, respectively ( p p