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Steven Swiryn, MD; Sung Soon Kim, MD

Arch Intern Med. 1983;143(2):314-316.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Occasional patients, during administration of quinidine (usually for atrial tachyarrhythmias), begin to experience episodes of syncope. It has been estimated that this may occur in as many as 1% to 8% of patients receiving quinidine therapy. The usual mechanism of this quinidine-induced syncope has been shown to be a rapid, polymorphic ventricular tachycardia called torsades de pointes and is associated with prolongation of the QT interval on the ECG. Although quinidine-induced syncope is the prototype of this long QT syndrome, syncope due to torsades de pointes has been reported as a complication of other antiarrhythmic drug therapy (particularly class I drugs, eg, procainamide and disopyramide) and in association with a long list of other clinical situations (Table).

REPORT OF A CASE

A 74-year-old woman with a long history of hypertension suffered recurrent paroxysms of atrial fibrillation for which she was receiving 0.125 mg/day of digoxin. On June 13, 1982, treatment . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Section of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Sept 16, 1982.

Reprint requests to the Section of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, University of Illinois, PO Box 6998, Chicago, IL 60680 (Dr Swiryn).

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