VDD Lead Extraction—Differences with Other Leads and Practical Tips in Management

Abstract

Background: VDD (atrial sensing, ventricular sensing/pacing) leads are relatively rarely implanted; therefore, experience in their extraction is very limited. We aimed to investigate whether VDD lead removal may be a risk factor for the increased complexity of transvenous lead extraction (TLE) or major complications. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 3808 TLE procedures (including 103 patients with VDD leads). Results: If TLE included VDD lead removal, procedure duration (lead dilation time) was prolonged, complicated extractions were slightly more common, and more advanced tools were required. This is partly due to longer implant duration (in patients with VDD systems—135.2 months; systems without VDD leads—109.3 months; p p p = 0.905). Conclusions: The extraction of VDD leads may be considered a risk factor for increased procedure complexity, but not for major complications. However, this is not a direct result of VDD lead extraction but specific characteristics of the patients with VDD leads. Operator skill and team experience combined with special custom maneuvers can enable favorable results to be achieved despite the specific design of VDD leads, even with older VDD lead models.

Keywords

• VDD lead extraction
• transvenous lead extraction
• difficult lead extraction
• complexity of lead extraction