Causes of Right Bundle Branch Block (RBBB)
Structural heart disease
- Chronically high right ventricular pressure (i.e. cor pulmonale)
- Acutely high right ventricular pressure with stretch (i.e. pulmonary embolism)
- Myocardial ischemia
- Myocardial infarction
- Myocardial inflammation (i.e. myocarditis)
- Hypertension
- Cardiomyopathy
- Congenital heart disease (i.e. atrial septal defect)
- Lenegre’s disease or Lev’s disease (i.e. idiopathic progressive cardiac conduction disease)
- Hyperkalemia, rarely
Iatrogenic
- Right heart catheter insertion results in transient RBBB in 5% of cases
- Nonsurgical septal reduction therapy with ethanol ablation, used in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and left ventricular outflow tract obstruction, results in RBBB in about 50% of cases
- Functional RBBB, as a result of a long preceding R-R interval following by a short cycle
- Idiopathic left ventricular tachycardia with right bundle branch block morphology and left axis deviation (Belhassen type) or in bundle branch reentrant ventricular tachycardia.
Pseudo right bundle branch block
- Brugada syndrome
- Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy