Impact of COVID-19 on the incidence of cardiac arrhythmias in implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients followed by remote monitoring

Incidence of ventricular arrhythmias per week compared with the number of new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases per week in France (blue line) and the daily percentage of COVID-19 information on 24-hour television information channels per week (red line). TV: television; VF: ventricular fibrillation; VT: ventricular tachycardia. ▪ The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a fast-growing worldwide pandemic. We aimed to investigate the incidence of cardiac arrhythmias among a large French cohort of implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients over the first 5 months of 2020. Five thousand nine hundred and fifty-four implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients were followed by remote monitoring during the COVID-19 period (from 01 January to 31 May 2020). Data were obtained from automated remote follow-up of implantable cardioverter defibrillators utilizing the Implicity® platform. For all patients, the type of arrhythmia (atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation), the number of ventricular arrhythmia episodes and the type of implantable cardioverter defibrillator-delivered therapy were recorded. A total of 472 (7.9%) patients presented 4917 ventricular arrhythmia events. An increase in ventricular arrhythmia incidence was observed after the first COVID-19 case in France, and especially during weeks #10 and #11, at the time of major governmental measures, with an increase in the incidence of antitachycardia pacing delivered therapy. During the 11 weeks before the lockdown order, the curve of the percentage of live-stream television coverage of COVID-19 information matched the ventricular arrhythmia incidence. During the lockdown, the incidence of ventricular arrhythmia decreased significantly compared with baseline (0.05±0.7 vs. 0.09±1.2 episodes per patient per week, respectively; P