Temporal relationship of implantable cardioverter defibrillator discharges and environmental physical activity.

Background: Studies by our group have shown an inverse relationship between sudden death and cardiac rhythm disturbances and environmental levels of geomagnetic activity (GMA). The aim of this study was to use the precise data provided by automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) regarding the onset of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia to link these events to GMA level.

Patients And Methods: The study group included 25 patients (22 men; 22 with ischemic cardiomyopathy) aged 28-81 years in whom an ICD had been implanted between 1995 and 2004.

Link between monthly rates of four subtypes of acute myocardial infarction and their corresponding cosmophysical activity parameters.

Unlabelled: The aim of this study was (1) to examine the relation between the monthly rate of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and three cosmophysical activity parameters: solar activity (SA), geomagnetic activity (GMA), and cosmic rays activity (CRA) levels; (2) to study whether different subtypes of AMI: ST-elevation MI (STEMI), non-ST-elevation (NSTEMI), Q-wave (Q-waveMI) and non-Q-wave (NQ-wave MI) are linked with monthly cosmophysical indices or with the daily level (I degrees-IV degrees) of GMA.

Methods: For the first question, we studied for 204 consecutive months (1983-1999) 16,683 patients (including 10405 males) with AMI who were included in the Kaunas Registry and for the second, 3824 AMI patients (2342 males), 72-month data. Cosmophysical data were obtained from the Apatity Neutron Monitoring Station of the Russian Academy of Science.