13th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 1998

January 24-31, 1998
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-44

Assessment of behaviour QT dispersion after acute myocardial infarction

Walter Colazzo, Sergio De Blasi, Giovanni Cassati, Rolando Mangia, Michele Accogli, Pasquale Palma, Giancarlo Piccinni, Luigi Sansone, Ferdinando De Nuccio, Pierangelo Morciano, Antonio Galati.
Division of Cardiology, Hospital "Card. G. Panico", Tricase (LE), Italy

Introduction

The presence of QT dispersion on 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) has been shown to reflect dispersion of ventricular refractoriness¹ and has been demonstrated to be a marker of arrhythmogenic potential in the absence² or in the presence³ of an acquired long QT interval; moreover the QT dispersion has been shown to identify patients at risk for life-threatening arrhythmias after a previous myocardial infarction² and patients with arrhythmic cardiac death and coronary artery disease⁴.

In the present study we examined how the dispersion of repolarization measured by QT and QTc dispersion changed after acute myocardial infarction, to establish the optimal time to measure the dispersion of repolarization in the arrhythmic risk stratification after acute myocardial infarction (AMI).