Background Recently, there has been a reevaluation about the prognosis of the drug-related bradyarrhythmias, especially of the atrioventricular block (AVB) and the results were not so good as our expectations. So we performed the investigations about the patients who had been diagnosed as drug induced bradyarrhythmias.
Methods Medical records of those who had been admitted to Chonbuk university hospital due to drug-related bradyarrhythmias since January 2000 were investigated retrospectively and clinical follow-up was performed using phone call.
Results Mean age of the 76 enrolled patients was 67.1 짹 9.7. Most common symptom was dizziness and the others were generalized weakness, syncope, dyspnea, and neurological abnormalities. Most common single causative agent was Betablockers (53.7%) and the others were digoxin (10.5%), nondihydropyridine calclum blockers (7.9%), antiarrhythmics (3.9%) and herb-medications (5.3%). Fifty-five patients showed sinus node dysfunction (SND, 72.4%) and 21 showed AVB (27.6%). Mean heart rate on admission was 36.9 짹 7.3 bpm. Mean admission period was 6.6 짹 4.5 (2~23) days. Pacemaker implantations were performed in 10 patients (13.2%). Six among them were with SND (6/55, 10.9%), 4 were with AVB (4/21, 19%).
Conclusion Although people who had got permanent pacemaker implantations were not so much as previous report, very close monitoring should be performed taking into account relatively high recurrence rate of the bradyarrhythmias, especially when related to the AVB (about 20%).