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The use of impedance cardiography for optimizing the interventricular stimulation interval in cardiac resynchronization therapy—a comparison with left ventricular contractility

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Abstract

The present study aimed to assess whether impedance cardiography (IC) can correctly identify the optimal interventricular (VV) pacing interval in cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). Twenty four patients received a biventricular pacemaker and underwent IC for cardiac output (CO) measurements to identify the optimal VV interval. Invasive measurements of left ventricular (LV) dP/dtmax were used as a reference. During optimization the VV interval was changed with 20 ms steps from +80 (LV pre-excitation) to−80 ms (RV pre-excitation). The optimal VV interval was defined as the one that resulted in the highest LV dP/dtmax value and the highest CO obtained by IC, respectively. During simultaneous biventricular pacing both LV dP/dtmax and CO increased (mean 16.6% and 16.2%, respectively) as compared to baseline. Biventricular pacing with optimized VV intervals resulted in a further absolute increase of LV dP/dt max and CO (5.6% and 41.3%, respectively). The average decrease in LV dP/dtmax was 79.6 ± 51.6 mmHg/s when the optimal VV interval was programmed according to the IC measurements. Cross spectral analysis showed no correlation between the optimal VV intervals identified by the two methods (p > 0.05) and identical optimal VV intervals were identified in only six of the 24 patients. When broader VV time intervals were compared the correlation between the two methods was statistically significant (p = 0,0166). In conclusion, the use of IC for VV interval optimization is questionable since these optimized time intervals do not seem to correlate well with those obtained by measuring LV dP/dt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cardiology, Uppsala University Hospital, S-751 85, Uppsala, Sweden

    Elena Sciaraffia, Helena Malmborg, Stefan Lönnerholm, Per Blomström & Carina Blomström Lundqvist

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  1. Elena Sciaraffia
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  2. Helena Malmborg
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  3. Stefan Lönnerholm
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Correspondence to Elena Sciaraffia.

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Sciaraffia, E., Malmborg, H., Lönnerholm, S. et al. The use of impedance cardiography for optimizing the interventricular stimulation interval in cardiac resynchronization therapy—a comparison with left ventricular contractility. J Interv Card Electrophysiol 25, 223–228 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10840-009-9367-x

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