This epidemiological survey highlights the increasing prevalence of heart block with age, providing data to estimate future pacemaker requirements in the community.
May inform pacemaker demand projections in aging populations; extends age-specific prevalence data but leaves open applicability to modern cohorts.
Future pacemaker requirements in Britain are related to the incidence of heart block and sinoatrial disorder (sick sinus syndrome) in the community. This paper reports an 8-year survey of these conditions by direct approach to the general practitioners looking after approximately 600 000 people. The patients were divided into 4 non-exclusive groups (numbers of patients are in parentheses); chronic complete heart block ( Patients with sinoatrial disorder and sinus bradycardia were some 10 years younger than those with heart block and their prevalence tended to decline in the very old, whereas the prevalence of heart block continued to increase almost exponentially, exceeding 5 per 1000 in men aged 80 and above.
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Shaw et al. (1978) studied this question.
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