The long-term prognosis of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest but no inducible ventricular tachycardia. The long-term prognosis of patients successfully resuscitated from cardiac arrest who do not have acute precipitating factors and in whom ventricular arrhythmias cannot be induced during baseline electrophysiologic testing is controversial. The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the long-term risk of recurrent sudden death and determine the clinical, angiographic, hemodynamic, and electrophysiologic predictors of recurrent cardiac arrest in such patients. Twenty-six (37%) of 71 consecutive patients with a single episode of aborted sudden death did not have inducible ventricular arrhythmias (less than 7 intraventricular responses) during baseline drug-free electrophysiologic study and they form the basis of this report. Their mean age was 54 +/- 13 (mean +/- SD) years and the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 0.47 +/- 0.17. After a mean follow-up period of 16 months, 11 patients (42%) had a recurrent cardiac arrest (fatal in 10 patients). The actuarial incidence of recurrent cardiac arrest was 30 +/- 10% at 1 year and 55 +/- 13% at 3 years. Patients with LVEF less than or equal to 0.40 had a significantly higher occurrence of recurrent cardiac arrest than those with LVEF greater than 0.40 (p = 0.02; 1-year actuarial incidence of 57 +/- 17% versus 13 +/- 19%). Patients with recurrent sudden death had a significantly greater incidence of dilated cardiomyopathy (55% versus 7%; p = 0.02) and baseline frequent premature ventricular contractions (PVCs greater than 10/hr; 64% versus 17%, p = 0.036) or nonsustained ventricular tachycardia (36% versus 0%; p = 0.37) than patients without these characteristics. 