Managing of SVT

Hi,

If you haven't guessed by my previous posts, let me tell you that I am an anesthesiologist by profession. Recently I had to face a difficult situation which I am sharing here. I was in my OT along with two if my assistants. We had finished our daily routine surgeries and the surgeons had left. Suddenly one of my assistants complained of heart palpitations and told me that he had faced this problem for the last two days. But this time it was more severe. He is a healthy male of 43 years with no previous medical problem. I examined him and found his pulse irregularly irregular. Auscultation revealed no cardiac murmur but the rhythm was irregular. I connected my AED to him which showed >10 VPCs /min. I  got an ECG print for record . As our hospital does not have a cardiac care unit , I had no option but to shift him to the nearest tertiary care hospital which would  take about half a hour to reach. Suddenly , however ,the patient's heart rate shot up to 250 with the ECG showing a narrow complex tachycardia suggestive of SVT. Now I had no option but either to cardiovert with DC shock or iv anti-arrhythmic. As he was fully conscious with no hemodynamic compromise (peripheral pulse still felt) I decided to go for iv. I put an iv access and administered diltiazem slowly. On giving 10 mg in 15 sec , his heart rate started to come down and in next 15 sec settled at 85-95 /min with ECG showing sinus rhythm but persistent >10 VPCs /min with couplets & triplets of VPCs. An iv infusion of Lidocaine 10 microgram /ml was started and titrated till the ECG showed only occasional VPC. A trop-T card test was carried out to rule out any recent silent Myocardial infarction and was negative. After 10 minutes the infusion was slowly reduced and finally stopped in 5 minutes as the ECG showed only occasional VPC even without the infusion. The patient was kept under observation for a couple of hours and finally sent home.  He is now dated for Echocardiography later this week. 

I still wonder whether I did the right thing by not going for DC version but as I had little ( or almost none) help  available at that time, I feel my choice to be justified. And you might be wondering what happened to adenosine ; well I did have it but found the vial of diltiazem first , so decided not to waste time searching for Adenosine. 

What would you have done? Comments please.