The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Vol 71, 559-565, Copyright © 1976 by The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Western Thoracic Surgical Association
The significance of electrode surface area and stimulating thresholds in permanent cardiac pacing
NP Smyth, PP Tarjan, E Chernoff and N Baker
This paper reports a long-term clinical study of evolving chronic
thresholds of cardiac stimulation in patients with implanted pacemakers and
two types of permanent prevenous unipolar pacing leads. A comprehensive
collection of threshold measurements is presented and analyzed. These data
were accumulated over a period of more than 4 years by measuring
stimulation thresholds at each of five stimulus pulse durations ranging
from 0.5 to 2.5 msec. Measurements were made at initial implantation and at
first (21 month) and second (42 month) reimplantations.