CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ZOLL® Medical Corporation, an Asahi Kasei Group Company that manufactures medical devices and related software solutions, announced that patients experience a high one-year survival rate following use of the LifeVest® Wearable Defibrillator. New results from the Prospective Registry of Patients Using the Wearable Defibrillator (WEARIT-II Registry) were presented today by Valentina Kutyifa, MD, PhD, University of Rochester Medical Center, during the Late-Breaking Clinical Trials session at CARDIOSTIM/EUROPACE 2016.

The WEARIT-II prospective registry includes more than 2,000 patients prescribed the LifeVest Wearable Defibrillator with U.S. enrollment completed in 2015. One-year survival following use of the LifeVest across all patients was high at 97%.1 Notably, one-year survival for patients who experienced VT/VF during use of the LifeVest was also high at 92%.1 There was no difference in survival between patients with ischemic or non-ischemic cardiomyopathy.1

Previously reported results from the WEARIT-II registry demonstrated a high sustained VT/VF event rate, with 22 events per 100 patient-years—2.1% of patients had a VT/VF event.2 One in 14 patients experienced a clinically meaningful arrhythmia requiring intervention while wearing the LifeVest.2
“These national study results demonstrate excellent one-year survival for patients prescribed with the LifeVest Wearable Defibrillator after an acute cardiac event like a heart attack or decompensation due to heart failure,” said Jason T. Whiting, President of ZOLL LifeVest. “These data are made even more powerful by the fact that patients in the study used the LifeVest for a median of 90 days and only 40% received an implantable defibrillator following LifeVest use, still survival was high even approximately nine months after ending use of the LifeVest. These new data clearly serve to further strengthen the clinical evidence supporting the guidelines and recommendations published within the last year for wearable defibrillator use.”

The wearable defibrillator is included in the 2015 European Society of Cardiology Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Ventricular Arrhythmias and the Prevention of Sudden Cardiac Death and has received formal recommendations in the 2016 American Heart Association Science Advisory for the Wearable Cardioverter Defibrillator, with endorsement from the Heart Rhythm Society.

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