Large blood transfusion as a rare cause of ventricular fibrillation.

Large blood transfusions are common in clinical practice. Though several complications have been described with this procedure, cardiac arrhythmias occur uncommonly in this setting. We describe a case of a previously healthy 17-year-old girl who developed wide-complex ventricular tachycardia rapidly culminating in a ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest several hours following an uneventful large-volume blood transfusion. Hypomagnesemia was detected on postcardiac arrest investigations. A review of this life-threatening complication and discussion on the ways to prevent it are presented.