{"id":20178,"date":"2015-12-09T12:38:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T17:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=20178"},"modified":"2025-06-03T16:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T21:27:07","slug":"atrioventricular-block","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2015\/12\/09\/atrioventricular-block\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiologist Q&#038;A: What Should You Know About Atrioventricular Block After Heart Valve Surgery?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I received\u00a0several great questions during our &#8216;Ask Me Anything&#8217; video series at the Heart Valve Summit. For example, Pamela posted at our Facebook page, &#8220;Can you talk about Atrioventricular Block after heart valve surgery?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To answer Pamela&#8217;s question, I was very lucky to connect with Dr. Robert Bonow, the former president of the American Heart Association, one of the lead authors of the Heart Valve Management Guidelines and a Professor of Cardiology at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/northwestern-memorial-valve-program\">Northwestern Medicine<\/a> in Chicago. So you know, Dr. Bonow\u00a0is a great guy who has treated many\u00a0patients from our community. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Here is Dr. Bonow&#8217;s response to Pamela&#8217;s question&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EZedk_s_tUM?rel=0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I hope that helped Pamela (and perhaps you) learn more about atrioventricular block after heart valve surgery.\u00a0Many thanks to Pamela for her question <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">and<\/span> a special thanks to Dr. Robert Bonow\u00a0for his continued support of our community!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/encyclopedia.nm.org\/Conditions\/Heart\/Conditions\/Arrhythmias\/134,234\">Heart Block: What Should Patients Know?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, I have posted a written transcript of my interview with Dr. Bonow below.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u00a0Hi, everybody. It\u2019s Adam with HeartValveSurgery.com. We\u2019re here at the Heart Valve Summit in Chicago Illinois. I\u2019m thrilled to be joined by Dr. Robert Bonow who is not only the Professor of Cardiology at Northwestern Medicine, but he\u2019s also the past President of the American Heart Association. Thanks so much for being with us.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Bonow: Thank you, Adam. I\u2019m happy to be here.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u00a0As you know, we\u2019re answering your questions that were posted on our Facebook page. Bob, this question comes in from Pamela Whitcomb. She has a question we\u2019ve never talked about here at HeartValveSurgery.com. She asked, \u201cPlease talk about AV block. I had a successful aortic valve replacement with a tissue valve in 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Bonow: \u00a0 Okay. AV block is a short way of saying atrial ventricular block. It\u2019s an electrical block. You think of your heart the way I tell my patients as a car. It\u2019s got moving parts and valves. It\u2019s also got fuel lines which are the coronary arteries and an electrical system also. Your car runs because all those things tend to work together; the pumps, the motor, the fuel lines, the electricity. You turn on the ignition if these go okay. Any one of those things can go wrong also, and that makes your car in-operational even if the motor\u2019s okay if the electrical system is not working well.<\/p>\n<p>Your heart works the same way. The chambers are connected electrically that allows your atrium to contract. When it does that, it sends an electrical signal to the ventricle which then wakes up and contracts also. That way, the atrium and the ventricle kind of work in sync. That\u2019s the atrioventricular conduction system. It\u2019s like nervous tissue inside the heart that connects the chamber so they\u2019re working mechanically because the electrical system is making them synchronize.<\/p>\n<p>AV block means there has been a disruption of the connection between the atrium and the ventricle. It comes in different stages. Sometimes the conduction is slower; we call that the first-degree AV block. Sometimes it misses a beat or two; that\u2019s called second-degree AV block. Sometimes it\u2019s completely disrupted or totally disconnected electrically; that\u2019s called a third-degree AV block.<\/p>\n<p>Now the trick for you, I think, Pamela, is that you mentioned you had an aortic valve replacement. The conduction system when it runs between the atrium and the ventricle runs right down the septum between the two chambers on the right and left side of the heart and right past the aortic valve. People who have aortic valve disease many times as the valve calcifies, the calcium itself can begin to encroach upon the conduction system and cause a problem. That could be an issue in any patient with aortic valve disease when the valve calcifies but also with surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the surgeon, to delicately dissect out the valve and replace a new valve, can\u2019t help sometimes but to cause some disruption of the conduction system. That could be temporary in some cases related to the surgery where you\u2019ll have some swelling or edema from the surgery; that may only be temporary. You may have some inflammation related to the surgery which could be temporary. Sometimes it\u2019s not temporary. Sometimes it can be permanent.<\/p>\n<p>Not knowing all of the details of your situation, Pamela, I can\u2019t tell you whether in your case it was something that was going on before the surgery or after the surgery. The point is it\u2019s not uncommon. Many times it is self-limited and the heart conduction goes back to normal afterwards. Some patients will need pacemakers.<\/p>\n<p>The good news, I think though, is that you had a successful valve replacement, and your heart mechanically now is working well. We can always deal with the electricity either with medicines or with our pacemakers and things to make the electrical system work again in synchrony, and hopefully your heart now is doing fine having had that valve replacement.<\/p>\n<p>Adam: \u00a0Pamela, I hope that helped you. I know it really helped me learn about AV block. Bob, as always, I want to thank you for your incredible support of our community. Our patients that come to you always have incredible things to say about you. Just thanks for your support of our community.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Bonow: \u00a0Thanks for everything you do for all of our patients, Adam. Your information is really so highly valuable to everybody. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recovery"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41660,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions\/41660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}