Abstract
The implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) is common for the management of nonischemic cardiomyopathy (NICM). Mortality is a crucial issue for patients with NICM. We can understand the mortality events of ICD versus medicine treatment via a systemic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials. The comparison between ICD treatment and medicine treatment was performed to find if the ICD treatment can be associated with lower relative risk and hazard ratio of mortality than the medicine treatment. In addition, the different kinds of mortality events were analyzed for the ICD treatment. After a restricted selection, 9 studies with a total of 4001 NICM patients were enrolled. The focused outcome was the events of all-cause mortality, sudden cardiac death, and cardiovascular death. The results showed that ICD treatment might be associated with lower relative risk and hazard ratio of all-cause mortality and sudden cardiac death. However, the relative risk and hazard ratio of cardiovascular mortality was not significantly different between ICD treatment and medicine treatment. In the current meta-analysis, the ICD treatment might show a lower relative risk and hazard ratio of all-cause mortality and sudden cardiac death when compared with medicine treatment. However, no significant differences were observed in cardiovascular mortality between ICD and medicine treatment.