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Case Reports
. 2020 Jul 23;20(1):344.
doi: 10.1186/s12872-020-01622-x.

Adverse clinical events caused by pacemaker battery depletion: two case reports

Junpeng Liu  1 , Li Wen  2 , Simin Yao  3 , Peipei Zheng  3 , Shuang Zhao  4 , Jiefu Yang  3
Affiliations
Case Reports

Adverse clinical events caused by pacemaker battery depletion: two case reports

Junpeng Liu et al. BMC Cardiovasc Disord. .

Abstract

Background: The clinical symptoms and adverse events caused by pacemaker battery depletion are not uncommon, but it is easy to miss or misdiagnose them clinically. To raise the level of awareness towards this clinical situation, we report two cases.

Case presentation: We described two cases of pacemaker battery depletion. Case 1 was an 83-year-old male manifesting chest pain and dyspnea. Automatic reprogramming after pacemaker battery depletion resulted in pacemaker syndrome. While case 2 was an 80-year-old female with complete atrioventricular heart block and torsade de pointes, due to complete depletion of pacemaker battery. In addition, we introduce a method that can easily identify the depletion of the pacemaker battery, which has clinical promotion value of a certain degree.

Conclusions: Those cases emphasize that serious morbidity can arise from pacemaker battery depletion, even in the early stages. Therefore, early detection and diagnosis is especially important.

Keywords: Atrioventricular block-induced torsade de pointes; Electrocardiogram; Pacemaker battery depletion; Pacemaker syndrome.

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Conflict of interest statement

None of us has any form of conflict of interest related to this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
ECG (a: at presentation b: after pacemaker exchange). a Non-synchronous ventricular pacing at a fixed of 65 bpm with retrograded atrial capture (black arrow). b Atrial pacing following by a spontaneous ventricular rhythm
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
ECG (a and b: at presentation). a: Completely dissociated P waves (black arrows) and wide QRS complexes. The rhythm strip showed complete atrioventricular(AV) block. The QRS complexes were wide because of the presence of right bundle branch block and left posterior fascicular block, representing the AV block is infranodal. QT intervals were prolonged (QTc 550 ms) and premature ventricular contraction(PVC) was present (black star). b: Complete AV block with wide QRS complexes, frequent PVCs were present. The first PVC occurred on the downslope of the T wave, which induced a polymorphic ventricular tachycardia with changing QRS complex amplitudes, which was known as torsade de pointes(TdP)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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