Video - Ventricular arrhythmias: Pathology review

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Video Summary

An arrhythmia is any disturbance in the rate, rhythm, site of origin, or conduction of the cardiac electrical impulse. Ventricular arrhythmias are those that originate within the ventricles and have a wide QRS complex on ECG. These two types of ventricular arrhythmias are ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation.

Ventricular tachycardia can be monomorphic meaning that all the QRS complexes look the same, or polymorphic meaning the QRS complexes are different in each beat. A specific and very dangerous type of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia is Torsades de Pointes, which presents a twisting pattern of QRS complexes. This can rapidly progress to ventricular fibrillation, in which the whole PQRST ECG pattern breaks down completely, leaving just some random undulating waves. This is the most common cause of sudden cardiac death.