More than 2500 persons from European population die of sudden cardiac death every day. Nearly 90 % of these cases are caused by malignant ventricular arrhythmias, which develope most frequently on the basement of structural heart disease. Some subpopulations of patients can be marked as a high risk for sudden cardiac death according to the today stratification procedures and can be treated in a pharmacological or nonpharmacological ways. The ways are as follows: a chronic therapy with beta-blockers agents, therapy of congestive heart failure, myocardial revascularization and implantation of cardioverterefibrillator. The prognosis of patients treated in those ways in comparison with conservatively treated groups is very good.

        Key words: Sudden cardiac death - Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator