Complete heart block or heart failure are just two of the serious or fatal complications that can result from heart conduction disorders. When the heart’s typical electrical conduction system is blocked, left ventricular conduction disease develops.
Implanting a permanent pacemaker is the only proven method of treatment, but there are no known preventative measures for this condition.
Emilie Frimodt-Miller, MD, and Gregory Marcus, MD, MAS, used a prospective trial in which people with hypertension were randomly assigned to more or less aggressive blood pressure (BP) control in order to conduct their study, which will be published on May 3, 2023 in JAMA Cardiology.
They discovered that rigorous blood pressure control is linked to a lower risk of left ventricular conduction disease, suggesting that the condition may be preventable.
The authors performed a post hoc analysis of the multicenter Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) to determine the association between targeting intensive (BP) control and the risk of developing left ventricular conduction disease. SPRINT originally recruited participants from 102 sites in the US and Puerto Rico and was conducted over a five-year period from November 2010 to August 2015. Participants included in SPRINT were adults 50 years and older with hypertension and at least one other cardiovascular risk factor.
Participants with baseline left ventricular conduction disease, ventricular pacing or ventricular pre-excitation were excluded from the analysis.
Participants were randomly assigned to either normal blood pressure control (targeting a systolic blood pressure less than 140) or a more aggressive BP control (targeting a BP less than 120). As part of the analysis, the authors reviewed the serial ECGs that the participants received over the course of the trial and found that those randomly assigned to the more aggressive BP control experienced significantly less conduction disease on the left side of the heart.
