Assessment of the effects of cardiac pacing by MRI (pilot)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Effect of right ventricular pacing in atrioventricular block by cardiovascular magnetic resonance: BLOCK-MR
IRAS ID
236042
Contact name
Peter S Swoboda
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leeds
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Slow heart rates (bradycardia and heart block) are often caused by disturbances to the electrical conduction system of the heart. Heart block can lead to symptoms such as shortness of breath and syncope (fainting). Implantation of a cardiac pacemaker, allows us to bypass the hearts own electrical system, is the only effective treatment for symptomatic heart block. However long term cardiac pacing can lead to the development of heart failure symptoms (shortness of breath and ankle swelling) and heart muscle weakness (cardiomyopathy) which are associated with worse patient outcomes. The precise mechanisms for these poor outcomes are not known and therefore identifying those patients at particular risk is not currently possible.
The advent of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) conditional pacemakers now means we can safely perform cardiac MRI (CMR) in these individuals. CMR allows the potential for longitudinal evaluation (evaluation over a period of time) of changes in the structure, function, and tissue composition of the heart muscle (myocardium).
We plan to recruit 50 patients presenting with symptomatic heart block. We will conduct CMR before and 6 months after device implantation. We aim to investigate which parameters on the baseline scan are predictive of a decline in heart function on the 6 month follow up scan.REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/EM/0475
Date of REC Opinion
11 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion