A comparison of antiarrhythmic drug therapy with implantable defibrillators in patients resuscitated from near­fatal ventricular arrhythmias. The Antiarrhythmics versus Implantable Defibrillators (AVID) Investigators
New England Journal of Medicine. 1997 Nov 27;337:1576­83: Issue: 22
Patients who survive life threatening ventricular arrhythmias are at risk for recurrent arrhythmias. They can be treated with either an implantable cardioverter­defibrillator or antiarrhythmic drugs - One group of patients was treated with implantation of a cardioverter­defibrillator; the other received class III antiarrhythmic drugs, primarily Amiodarone at empirically determined doses.  Of 1016 patients (45 percent of whom had ventricular fibrillation, and 55 percent ventricular tachycardia), 507 were randomly assigned to treatment with implantable cardioverter­defibrillators and 509 to antiarrhythmic drug therapy. The primary end point was overall mortality.  Overall survival was greater with the implantable defibrillator, with unadjusted estimates of 89.3 percent, as compared with 82.3 percent in the antiarrhythmic­drug group at one year, 81.6 percent versus 74.7 percent at two years, and 75.4 percent versus 64.1 percent at three years (P<0.02).