[Atrio-biventricular electrostimulation in the treatment of congestive heart failure. Case report]

Over the past few years, indications for permanent cardiac pacing have been broadened. Accordingly, American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology included dilated cardiomyopathy, hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy and pacing for prevention of atrial fibrillation into indications for permanent cardiac pacing. Studies have described favourable effect of dual chamber cardiac pacing in congestive heart failure in dilated cardiomyopathy, regardless of etiology. In the past two years, even more beneficial effect was associated with multisite, biventricular cardiac pacing. On the basis of the reported results, a multisite pacemaker InSync was implanted to a patient with dilated cardiomyopathy (NYHA class IV), who was also on the list for heart transplantation, and who fulfilled other criteria for implantation of multisite pacemaker. During the eleven-month follow-up, functional improvement, better 6-minute walking test and enhanced quality of life of the patient were observed, which is in accordance with the literature data.