Heart rate responses to autonomic drugs in sick sinus syndrome--correlation with syncope and electrophysiologic data

To assess the influence of autonomic regulation on automaticity in patients with intrinsic sinus node dysfunction, heart rate responses to autonomic drugs were evaluated in 28 patients with sick sinus syndrome and in 8 normal subjects. Heart rates before and after intravenous administration of isoproterenol (Isp), propranolol, atropine, and methoxamine were measured. To compare the results with electrophysiologic data, heart rate and automaticity recovery time (ART) before and after pharmacologic autonomic blockade (AB) were evaluated. Seventeen patients without syncope showed a similar heart rate response after administration of Isp to that of normal subjects, but 11 patients with syncope showed a significantly lower response than patients without syncope. Responses to atropine and methoxamine were lower and response to propranolol was larger in patients as compared to normal subjects. However, no significant difference was observed between patients with and without syncope. Twelve patients showed severely prolonged max ART exceeding 5000 msec after AB. Seven of them showed preserved response to Isp and max ART before AB was significantly shorter than that after AB. The other 5 patients with lower response to Isp showed no significant change in max ART before and after AB. In conclusion, sympathetic regulation in patients with preserved response to Isp might compensate for the impaired intrinsic automaticity in preventing syncope even in patients with severely impaired intrinsic sinus node function.