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

January 24-31, 1998
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-47

Increased QT dispersion and other repolarization abnormalities as a possible cause of electrical instability in isolated aortic stenosis. Increased QT dispersion in isolated aortic stenosis

Valentino Ducceschi, Berardo Sarubbi, Antonello D'Andrea, Biagio Liccardo, Nicola Briglia, Antonio Carozza, Joseph Marmo, Lucio Santangelo, Aldo Iacono, Maurizio Cotrufo.
Seconda Universita degli Studi di Napoli, Facolta di Medicina e Chirurgia, Istituto Medico-Chirurgico di Cardiologia, Naples, Italy

Introduction

Several studies have revealed that serious arrhythmic events may threaten the natural course of patients with aortic stenosis (AS)¹. Aim of our study was to analyze the ventricular repolarization phase of patients with isolated AS in order to search for possible abnormalities that might contribute to explain the electrical instability peculiar to this valve disease. Therefore, we have considered various electrocardiographic intervals (QT, QTc, JT, JTc) and indexes (QT and QTc dispersion) that have been recently introduced for a detailed non-invasive evaluation of the ventricular repolarization². While QT and JT intervals reflect the whole duration of ventricular repolarization, QT dispersion is commonly used to assess the degree of inhomogeneity of ventricular recovery².