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