Home Cardiology Longer QRS Duration Predicts Cardiac Death, Heart Attack

Longer QRS Duration Predicts Cardiac Death, Heart Attack

Findings in patients with known, suspected coronary artery disease

MONDAY, Oct. 19, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Longer QRS duration predicts cardiac death and nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) in patients with coronary artery disease, according to a study published in the Nov. 1 issue of The American Journal of Cardiology.

Roy Huurman, from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, and colleagues investigated the long-term prognostic value of QRS duration in 512 patients (308 men) with known or suspected coronary artery disease who underwent myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI).

The researchers found that over a mean follow-up of 8.6 years, 290 patients died (60 percent), with 27 percent of these deaths attributable to cardiac causes. Twenty-eight patients (6 percent) had nonfatal MI, and 127 patients (25 percent) underwent late coronary revascularization (>three months). The annualized cardiac death rates and cardiac death or nonfatal MI rates were lower in patients with QRS duration <120 ms compared with those with QRS duration of ≥120 ms (2.2 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively, versus 4.1 percent and 4.4 percent, respectively). In multivariate models, QRS duration ≥120 ms was an independent predictor of both end points, in addition to clinical characteristics and MPI results.

“In conclusion, QRS duration ≥120 ms is an independent predictor of cardiac death and cardiac death or nonfatal MI, after adjustment for clinical characteristics and MPI results,” write the authors.

Abstract
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