OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the long-term outcomes of children submitted to permanent cardiac pacing due to postoperative bradycardia and to identify risk factors for mortality. METHODS: From 1980 to 2004, 120 children were submitted to permanent pacemaker (PM) implantation. Interval between the defect correction and PM implantation was 1.2 ± 2.8 years, on average (median = 21 days). Atrioventricular blocks were present in 94.2% of patients. Transvenous leads (78.3%) and ventricular pacemaker systems (79.2%) were used in most of the cases. Risk factors were studied using the Cox proportional model. The Kaplan-Meier method and the Log-Rank test were used to analyze survival. RESULTS: After a mean of 5.7 ± 5.9 years (maximum = 22.5 years) of follow-up, 97 patients were alive and 11 were lost from the follow-up study. The main causes of death were terminal heart failure (10), infection not related to implantation (six), and sudden death (three). The 5-, 10-, and 15-year survival rates were 80.9 ± 4.1%, 75.4 ± 5.5% and 67.2 ± 7.4%, respectively. The persistence of hemodynamic problems (palliative procedures, the use of valve prostheses or the presence of residual defects) was identified as the only independent risk predictors for mortality, with significant alterations in the survival curves (p=0.0123). CONCLUSION: The implant of permanent pacemakers in children provided good survival expectancy, mainly depending on the underlying disease and the type of the correction made. Palliative corrections, such as the presence of residual defects or valve prostheses were the only predictors of poor results in these children.
Cardiac pacing; Heart block; Pediatrics; Cardiac surgical procedures; Postoperative complications
