Lead impedance, pacing threshold and percentage of ventricular pacing according to the lead age – a cross-sectional study upon patients during follow-up.

Background Patients with permanent pacemakers should be followed up regularly and parameters recorded during the follow-up visits might have potential for further diagnostic studies. Material and methods A pilot cross-sectional study on 127 consecutive patients who underwent pacemaker follow-up was performed. Results The study revealed that patients with older ventricular leads (more than 10 years) have higher lead impedance in comparison with patients with newer ventricular leads (less than 10 years) – 512 Ω vs 461 Ω (median values), with no differences in pacing thresholds, percentage of ventricular pacing, presence of ventricular high rate episodes or status of absolute pacemaker dependency. Conclusions This study demonstrates that parameters obtained from a regular pacemaker check-up differ according to variables such as lead age, which opens a new field for studies investigating other variables (e.g. disease biomarkers) in correlation with parameters from the pacemaker check-up.