Acute and chronic haemodynamic effects of biventricular pacing and of switching to different pacing modalities in heart failure patients.
BACKGROUND
In patients with severe heart failure, sinus rhythm and wide QRS complex biventricular (BiV) pacing leads to clinical and haemodynamic improvement, but the immediate reversibility of these changes is not known.


METHODS
We assessed the acute and medium-term (3-month) haemodynamic effects of BiV pacing and of switching to other pacing modalities in 21 patients with severe heart failure, sinus rhythm and QRS>or=130 ms. Haemodynamic studies were performed: 1) at the time of implantation of a BiV pacing device, during AAI pacing, atrial synchronous right ventricular (RV) pacing, atrial synchronous left ventricular (LV) pacing and atrial synchronous BiV pacing (all at 100 bpm); 2) after 3 months of continuous BiV pacing--with evaluations being made by switching to RV and the other pacing modalities.


RESULTS
At both the acute and medium-term evaluations, BiV pacing provided the greatest improvement in cardiac index. Switching from BiV to RV pacing led to a more marked decrease in the cardiac index at 3 months. No strict correlation was evident between acute and medium-term effects of BiV pacing on cardiac index.


CONCLUSIONS
Cardiac resynchronization by BiV pacing provides acute/medium-term improvements in cardiac index. Sudden, medium-term failure of LV stimulation can lead to an even more pronounced haemodynamic derangement than that inducible by RV pacing at baseline. Acute haemodynamic evaluations do not seem to provide a powerful way for identifying medium-term responders.
Boriani
Giuseppe
G
Institute of Cardiology, University of Bologna, Azienda Ospedaliera S.Orsola-Malpighi, Bologna, Italy. cardio1@med.unibo.it
Saporito
Davide
D
Biffi
Mauro
M
Martignani
Cristian
C
Valzania
Cinzia
C
Diemberger
Igor
I
Ziacchi
Matteo
M
Artale
Paolo
P
Grigioni
Francesco
F
Bacchi
Letizia
L
Specchia
Salvatore
S
Rapezzi
Claudio
C
Branzi
Angelo
A
D000208:Acute Disease; D002304:Cardiac Pacing, Artificial / Q000379:methods*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000628:therapy*; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D006439:Hemodynamics; D006801:Humans