incidence of atrioventricular block with vasodilator stress spect: a meta-analysis

Adenosine or regadenoson are often used with pharmacologic stress testing. adenosine trigger atrioventricular block (avb). despite its higher selectivity, regadenoson has also been associated with avb. we studied the incidence of de novo avb with these agents. a comprehensive search of scopus was performed from inception to 2016. studies of at least 10 patients, using adenosine and/or regadenoson with spect-mpi, reporting rates of avb were selected for further review. thirty four studies were pooled including 22,957 patients. adenosine was used in 21 studies and regadenoson in 15. both were administered in two studies. the estimated incidence of overall and high-grade avb was 3.81% (95% ci 1.99%-6.19%) and 1.93% (95% ci 0.77%-3.59%), respectively. the incidence of avb (8.58%; 95% ci 5.55%-12.21% vs 0.30%; 95% ci 0.04%-0.82%, respectively, p < .001) and high-grade avb (5.21%; 95% ci 2.81%-8.30% vs 0.05%; 95% ci < .001%-0.19% respectively, p < .001) were higher with adenosine compared to regadenoson. avb is seen in about 4% of patients undergoing vasodilator stress test. both overall and high-grade avb are more frequent with adenosine compared to regadenoson.