Article text Home Figure 1. Schematic representation of the decision model.
Circles represent chance nodes.
A patient who receives the ICD-only regimen enters the Markov tree only if he or she survives ICD implantation. The Markov trees represent the clinical events that can occur during each 1-month period as a patient is followed until death. A patient who is well at the end of a month reenters the Markov tree. The braces represent subtree notation and indicate that a patient who has VT or VF enters the arrhythmia subtree, which is shown in the top panel of Figure 2 . Subtrees are denoted by rounded rectangles.