Evaluation of left ventricular hypertrophy in patients requiring permanent pacing

Objective: Hypertension may lead to left ventricular hypertrophy, fibrosis and degeneration of the conduction system. Our aim was to study the association of hypertrophy with certain arrhythmias such as complete atrioventricular block (AVB) and symptomatic sick sinus syndrome (SSS) that require implantation of permanent pacemaker. Methods: We studied 130 patients that had been given a pacemaker because of complete AVB, 130 patients that had been given a pacemaker because of symptomatic SSS and 45 patients without cardiac conduction disturbances. In order to estimate left ventricular hypertrophy, indexes of relative wall thickness (RWT) and left ventricular mass (LVM) were evaluated by echocardiography. Results: We observed significant association between complete AVB and abnormal values of echocardiographic indexes. Conclusions: Our results lend further support to the hypothesis that complete AVB is associated with left ventricular hypertrophy. This hypothesis is enhanced by the observation that the majority of patients with complete AVB were hypertensive.