Association between integrated backscatter and arrhythmia in patients with ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy

Background Ventricular scars due to myocardial infarction provide a substrate for ventricular arrhythmias, and cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) is the golden standard for the quantification of scar tissue magnitude. CMR has still limitations with patients with ICD despite ICD's becoming MR‐compatible. We investigated the association between calibrated integrated backscatter (cIBS) and arrhythmia frequency in patients with ICD. Methods Thirty‐two ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (ICM) patients with VVI‐ICD (mean age 66.56 ± 9.05, 28 male, and four female) were divided into three groups according to their arrhythmia frequency (ventricular arrhythmia—[VA ‐], VA + [VA +], and arrhythmia storm [AS]). Then with transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), all patients’ cIBS values were calculated and these values were compared with the patients’ arrhythmia frequency. Results cIBS values of patients with VA + and AS were significantly higher in the apical‐septal (0.66 ± 0.11 vs. 0.50 ± 0.16, p = .008) and apical‐lateral (0.62 ± 0.19 vs. 0.46 ± 0.18, p = .041) segments compared to those of patients with VA ‐. The cIBS values of apical‐septal (0.50 ± 0.16 vs. 0.65 ± 0.08 vs. 0.66 ± 0.13 respectively, p = .032) and apical‐anterior (0.53 ± 0.22 vs. 0.48 ± 0.17 vs. 0.79 ± 0.23 respectively, p = .03) segments were significantly different between the groups. Furthermore, in the post hoc analysis, the difference was significantly higher in VA + than VA ‐ in the apical‐septal segment and higher in AS than VA + in apical‐anterior segments. Conclusion Our findings suggest an association between the cIBS values and arrhythmia frequency in the study group.