Does atrial triggered pacing (VAT) improve physical working capacity compared to ventricular inhibited pacing (VVI) in patients with symptomatic high-degree AV block?
In patients with high-degree AV block, the improvement in physical working capacity with VAT pacing compared to VVI pacing is driven by heart rate increase rather than AV synchronization.
In 14 patients with symptomatic high-degree AV block, studies were carried out of the effect on physical working capacity when an atrial triggered mode of cardiac pacing (VAT) was substituted for ventricular inhibited pacing (VVI). The tests were designed to elucidate the quantitative relationship between the effect of rate increase and AV synchronization by comparing VVI pacing matched to the same rate as VAT. The work load was increased by 10 W/min. The physical working capacity increased by 25% with VAT as compared with VVI (p less than 0.001). The improvement was entirely attributed to heart rate increase, and not to AV synchronization.
S. KENNETH PEHRSSON (Wed,) studied this question.
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