Risk and benefits of temporary pacemaker electrodes in adult open-heart surgery—a systematic review

Background To assess the achieved risk and benefits of inserting temporary epicardial pacemaker electrodes after open-heart surgery for potential treatment of postoperative cardiac arrhythmias, and to investigate the extent of its use in clinical practice. Main text A systematic search was conducted in PubMed and repeated in Embase and Scopus using the PRISMA guidelines. The search identified 905 studies and resulted in 12 included studies, where the type of surgery, study design, total number of included patients, number of patients having temporary pacemaker electrodes inserted, number of patients requiring temporary pacing, primary reason for pacing, significant factors predicting temporary pacing, registered complications and study conclusion were assessed. Eight papers concluded that routine insertion of temporary pacemaker electrodes in all postoperative patients is unnecessary. One paper concluded that they should always be inserted, while three papers concluded that pacing is useful in the postoperative period, but did not recommend a frequency of which they should be inserted. Conclusions The literature suggests that the subgroup of younger otherwise healthy patients without preoperative arrhythmia having isolated coronary artery bypass grafting surgery or single valve surgery should not routinely have temporary pacemaker electrodes inserted.