Surgical Interventions

Evidence for non-pharmacological management of bradycardia in acute SCI has been surgical and focuses on the effectiveness of cardiac pacemaker placement.

Discussion

Two studies examined the implantation of cardiac pacemakers for the treatment of bradycardia during acute SCI. Pacemaker insertion occurred 9-17 days after injury. Compared to patients not requiring a cardiac pacemaker, patients who underwent pacemaker placement had bradycardic episodes over a significantly longer period of time (p=0.01) and a trend towards later bradycardic onset (p=0.05).

A case series by Franga et al. (2006) retrospectively reviewed five cervical SCI patients who developed recurrent bradyarrythmias requiring aggressive management and subsequently underwent cardiac pacemaker placement 16-36 days afer injury. No symptomatic bradycardic events occurred following successful pacemaker placement. In another case series by Moerman et al. (2011), 106 cervical SCI patients were reviewed from a trauma center registry. Of these patients, 14% were documented to have bradycardia, of which 47% underwent pacemaker placement. However, only 6 were deemed to have reviewable data; in these cardiac pacemaker placement led to resolution of all bradycardic episodes.

Conclusion

There is level 4 evidence (from two case series: Moerman et al. 2011; Franga et al. 2006) that cardiac pacemaker implantation eliminates bradycardic events in acute SCI patients.