14th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 2000

Jan. 29 - Feb. 5, 2000
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-41

Biatrial pacing using standard DDD pacemaker. Long term experience in 50 pts

Andrzej Kutarski, Teresa Widomska-Czekajska, Krzysztof Oleszczak, Maciej Wójcik, Krzysztof Poleszak.
Dept of Cardiology, University Medical Academy, Lublin, Poland

Introduction

The role of interatrial conduction disturbances (IACD) as substrate of reentrant atrial arrhythmias was described many years ago but only resynchronising atrial pacing modes created the new therapeutic option for these pts. Inspired with Daubert’s^1,2 and Prakash and Saksena’s^3,4 results we started to work with BiA pacing three years ago using standard leads and pacemakers^5,6. “Y” connectors were not available on our market at that time and we implanted systems described in 1988 by Markewitz and Osterholzer⁷ for resynchronisation of donor and recipient atria in pts after orthotopic heart transplantation and allograft’s sinus node insufficiency. Since September 1996 till December 1997 we implanted this BiA pacing systems in growing up to 50 pts group and our primary experiences were promising^5,6,8 (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: BiA pacing system with standard DDD pacemaker. RAA (BP) lead connected to the atrial channel and CS (BP) lead to the ventricular port of a pacemaker. VDD or DDD program with ultrashort A-V delay (15 ms in pacemakers used by us) enables resynchronising pacing of LA during SR and RA extrasystoles. Resynchronisation of LA premature ectopic beats impossible.

The aim of this study was presentation of our experience with clinical, technical and electrophysiological aspects of long term BiA and lone atrial pacing using standard DDD pacemaker.