CLINICAL-EXPERIENCE WITH 4 NEWLY DEVELOPED, POROUS STIMULATION ELECTRODES

Newly developed pacing electrodes with so-called porous surfaces promi se a significantly improved postoperative pacing and sensing threshold . We therefore investigated four newly developed leads (ELA-PMCF-860 n = 10; Biotronik-60/4-DNP n = 10, CPI-4010 n = 10, Intermedics-421-03- Biopore n = 6) connected to two different pacing devices (Intermedics NOVA II, Medtronic PASYS) in 36 patients (18 men, 18 women, age: 69.7 +/- 9.8 years) suffering from symptomatic bradycardia. The individual electrode maturation process was investigated by means of repeated mea surements of pacing threshold, electrode impedance in acute, subacute, and chronic phase, as well as energy consumption and sensing behavior in the chronic phase. However, with the exception of the 4010, the in vestigated leads showed largely varying values of the pacing threshold with individual peaks occurring from the second up to the 13th week. All leads had nearly similar chronic pacing thresholds (PMCF 0.13 +/- 0.07; DNP 0.25 +/- 0.18; Biopore 0.15 +/- 0.05; 4010 0.14 +/- 0.05 ms) . Impedance measurements revealed higher, but not significantly differ ent values for the DNP (PMCF 582 +/- 112, DNP 755 +/- 88, Biopore 650 +/- 15, 4010 718 +/- 104 Ohm). Despite differing values for pacing thr eshold and impedance, the energy consumption in the chronic phase duri ng threshold-adapted, but secure stimulation (3 impulse-width at pac ing threshold) were comparable.