Clinical Profile and Outcome of Patients with Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device-Related Infection

In recent years, the incidence of infections related to cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED) has increased sharply, impacting mortality.

To verify the proportion of patients with CIED infection; to analyze their clinical profile and the variables related to the infection and its progression.

Retrospective and longitudinal observational study including 123 patients with CIED infection among 6406 procedures. Parametric tests and a level of significance of 5% were used in the statistical analyses.

The mean age of patients was 60.1 years and mean length of stay in hospital was 35.3 days; most (71) patients were male, and the system was completely removed in 105 cases. Infectious endocarditis (IE) and sepsis were observed in 71 and 23 patients, respectively. Intra-hospital mortality was 19.5%. IE was associated with extrusion of the generator (17.0% vs 19.5% with and without IE, respectively, p = 0.04, inverse association) and sepsis (15.4% vs 3.2%, p = 0.01). Intra-hospital death was associated with IE (83.3% vs 52.0% with and without intra-hospital death, respectively, p = 0.005) and sepsis (62.5% vs 8.1%, p < 0.0001). Ninety-nine patients were discharged. During a mean follow-up of 43.8 months, mortality rate was 43%; among patients with sepsis, it was 65.2% (p < 0.0001). By applying a Kaplan-Meier survival curve, we did not indicate significant associations with sex, etiologic agent, ejection fraction, IE, or treatment modality. The death rate was 32.8% for patients subjected to endocardial electrode reimplantation and 52.2% for epicardial reimplantation (p = 0.04). Chagasic etiology (44.7% of the baseline heart diseases) did not influence clinical and laboratory variables or disease progression.

The infection rate was 1.9%, mostly in men. We observed an association of intra-hospital mortality with IE and sepsis. After discharge, the annual mortality rate was 11.8%, influenced by sepsis during hospitalization and epicardial implantation. (Arq Bras Cardiol. 2021; [online].ahead print, PP.0-0).