[Value of transesophageal programmed atrial stimulation in the evaluation of unexplained cerebrovascular accidents]

Certain embolic cerebrovascular accidents can be explained by the development of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. When noninvasive complementary investigations are negative, programmed atrial stimulation can be proposed to detect increased atrial vulnerability. The objective of this study was to evaluate the reliability of this method performed via a transoesophageal approach in 59 subjects presenting with an embolic cerebrovascular accident and who were in sinus rhythm at the time of the accident. Seven of these patients had a history of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) or atrial tachycardia (AT) (group I). Three of these seven patients also presented AV nodal reentrant junctional tachycardia. The other 52 patients had no history of arrhythmia and their Holter recording did not reveal any episodes of sustained atrial tachycardia (group II). Transoesophageal programmed atrial stimulation used up to 2 extrastimuli under baseline conditions and during Isuprel infusion. The following results were obtained: sustained atrial tachycardia (> 1 min) was induced in all patients of group 1, 3 of them also presented inducible junctional tachycardias. 14 patients of group II (27%) presented inducible supraventricular tachycardia: atrial tachycardia in 7 cases. Patients in group II with inducible AT presented either heart disease (n = 3) or minor abnormalities on the Holter recording (runs of atrial premature complexes or sinus pauses (n = 3). Two of these patients subsequently developed sustained atrial fibrillation during follow-up. In 25 patients with normal Holter recording and no heart disease, programmed atrial stimulation induced junctional tachycardia in 4 cases. In conclusion, transoesophageal electrophysiological investigation is a useful way to identify various forms of supraventricular tachycardia able to explain an embolic cerebrovascular accident. The considerable incidence of inducible AV nodal reentrant junctional tachycardia must be emphasized, while the incidence of atrial fibrillation is much lower than during intracardiac investigations.