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High-risk electrocardiographic parameters are ubiquitous in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy
Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology, 08/02/2012
Clinical Article
Carey MG et al. – 34% of all assessable parameters were abnormal. In conclusion, a significant proportion of ECG parameters cannot be assessed in patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, but high–risk results are ubiquitous. The influence of these issues will be clarified when the results of the Prediction of Arrhythmic Events with Positron Emission Tomography study are available to actually determine the predictive value of these parameters on cause–specific mortality in a high–risk cohort.
Methods- To determine the magnitude of these changes in a cohort with ischemic cardiomyopathy authors analyzed 15 previously validated high–risk parameters from the resting and ambulatory ECG in subjects enrolled in the Prediction of Arrhythmic Events with Positron Emission Tomography (PAREPET) study (n = 198).
- Using the published exclusion criteria from the validation studies (i.e., atrial fibrillation, persistent pacing, prolonged QRS), only 4 high–risk ECG parameters (27%) could be evaluated in all subjects and only 42% of subjects could have all 15 ECG parameters assessed.
- Nevertheless, almost every subject (97%) had at least one abnormal parameter.
- On average, there were 3.4 ± 1.8 (range, 0–8) high–risk ECG parameters per subject among the 11.7 ± 4.5 (range, 4–15) parameters that could be assessed.