1 Department of Medicine, Children's Hospital Medical Center, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Significant cardiac conduction disturbance in patients with central nervous system disease rarely occurs. While commonly induced in the experimental animal the appearance of such arrhythmias in the human has been limited to single reports of ectopic tachycardia and atrioventricular (AV) block with several CNS disorders.1-5
This article presents a child with cyanotic congenital heart disease who developed persistent AV block following needle aspiration of a right thalamic brain abscess.
Case Report
L.D. is a 9-year-old girl with tetralogy of Fallot for which she has undergone three systemic-pulmonary arterial anastomoses. Following the last of these, a Waterston shunt in 1965, she had done well on digoxin, .090 mg twice a day with minimal exercise intolerance and cyanosis.