Implications of the Multicenter Automatic Defibrillator Implantation Trial-II

摘要

Al-Khatib and colleagues (1) failed to emphasize a major limitation of their study: lack of applicability to persons living in developing countries—over one third of the world's population. Implantable defibrillators are too prohibitively expensive for these nations to even consider. Given that the major contribution to the global burden of cardiovascular disease is anticipated to arise from developing nations (2), it is an unfortunate reality that many deaths that could be prevented by ICDs will occur in these countries.