Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator Shock after Stenting Across the Device Leads

A 45-year-old man with nonischemic cardiomyopathy and end-stage renal disease had lived uneventfully with a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator (CRT-D) for 5 years. Less than a month before presenting at our institution, he had undergone stenting of his partially occluded subclavian vein, to relieve stenosis of the ipsilateral arteriovenous fistula that was used for his hemodialysis. The CRT-D subsequently discharged. Device interrogation revealed that electrical noise originating from leads damaged by the stent had caused the inappropriate shock and intermittent electrical discharges thereafter. The patient was highly traumatized by these events and insisted upon device removal, which deprived him of a potentially life-saving intervention. He later had a cardiac arrest that resulted in sustained profound hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy with minimal neurologic recovery: his family placed him in a long-term care facility on ventilator support, with a tracheostomy and feeding tube. This situation might have been avoided through collaboration between the interventional radiologist and the electrophysiologist. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a patient with nonischemic cardiomyopathy and end-stage renal disease who presented with inappropriate defibrillator discharge caused by lead damage secondary to stenting across the leads.