• Vincent Galand, Elliot Hwang, Estelle Gandjbakhch, Frédéric Sebag, Eloi Marijon, Serge Boveda, Christophe Leclercq, Pascal Defaye, Arnaud Rosier, and Raphaël Pedro Martins.
• Department of Cardiology and Vascular Diseases, CHU de Rennes, 35000 Rennes, France. Electronic address: vincent.galand35@gmail.com.
• Arch Cardiovasc Dis. 2021 May 1; 114 (5): 407-414.

BackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a fast-growing worldwide pandemic.AimsWe 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.MethodsFive 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.ResultsA 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<0.001). Importantly, no correlation was observed between ventricular arrhythmia incidence and the curve of COVID-19 incidence. No changes were observed regarding atrial fibrillation/atrial tachycardia episodes over time.ConclusionsAn increase in ventricular arrhythmia incidence was observed in the 2 weeks before the lockdown order, at the time of major governmental measures. Ventricular arrhythmia incidence decreased dramatically during the lockdown.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

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