Introduction:

Despite their indisputable benefits for the quality of life and life expectancy of patients with precise pacemaker indications, a number of these devices have shown to have deleterious effects in terms of left ventricular function and geometry.

Objective:

Identify echocardiographic changes in patients with permanent cardiac stimulation applied from the right ventricular tip.

Methods:

A prospective longitudinal descriptive study was conducted of 84 patients requiring permanent pacemaker implantation with stimulation from the right ventricular tip. Echocardiographic data were collected before and after implantation.

Results:

Of the total patients, 53.65% were male. Mean age was 68.25 years. An increase was observed in all the means of echocardiographic values except for the left ventricular ejection fraction, which decreased. The sequential stimulation group presented 4 more cases with grade II diastolic dysfunction than at baseline, whereas the group with non-sequential stimulation included 5 grade III diastolic dysfunction cases. Left ventricular ejection fraction lowered 6% in patients with sequential stimulation and 9% in patients with non-sequential stimulation.

Conclusions:

Echocardiographic changes during the study showed a group tendency to increase, except for the left ventricular ejection fraction, which decreased.

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