Aggravation of ventricular arrhythmia. A drug-induced complication.

Each antiarrhythmic agent can cause side effects, but most of these are easily recognised by the patient or physician. However, one potentially serious side effect common to all of these drugs is aggravation of ventricular arrhythmia. Often this is without symptoms and goes unrecognised by the patient. It occurs in 11 to 16% of drug tests depending upon the method of drug evaluation employed. There are no ECG changes which predict its occurrence and blood concentrations of drug are usually within a therapeutic range. There are no clinical patient features which are associated with this toxic reaction and it does not correlate with the presence or extent of underlying heart disease, the nature of the presenting arrhythmia or the known electrophysiological properties of the antiarrhythmic drug. Careful evaluation of these drugs is therefore essential.