Unfortunate Hand Positioning Yielding Inappropriate Defibrillator Shock: Another Paradigm of a Guilty Association Between Patient Awareness and Occupational Hazard

Abstract

A 64-year-old patient had a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator implanted 4 years ago for dilated cardiomyopathy. He recently had an inappropriate shock as a result of an electrical leak from a refrigerator causing electromagnetic interference. An analysis of the patient case and a discussion of the features of this specific paradigm of inappropriate therapy are presented.