The prognostic role of electrocardiographic left ventricular mass assessment for identifying PCI-treated patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction at high risk of unfavourable outcome.

Background: In prognostic terms, evaluation of an ECG recording in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) appears to be inferior to echocardiographic (ECHO) assessment of left ventricular remodelling and the activities of cardiac enzymes and certain hormones. It was our hypothesis that, in the era of interventional treatment of AMI, some ECG parameters are still valid for the purpose of risk stratification.

Methods: A total of 66 consecutive patients with AMI (43 male and 23 female, with a mean age of 61 +/- 11 years) were treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

[Prevalence of risk factors for atherosclerosis in participants of the Southern Poland Epidemiological Survey (SPES) with normal blood pressure].

Results of many studies indicate that cardiovascular diseases develop more often in subjects with blood pressure higher than optimal, but lower than the level, at which the diagnosis of arterial hypertension and implementation of therapy is justifiable. The aims of this study were the assessment of prevalence of risk factors for atherosclerosis among people with normal blood pressure in a population of Southern Poland (Southern Poland Epidemiological Survey--SPES), the quantitative evaluation of global risk for coronary events in relation to normal blood pressure classes, as well as the estimation of the size of subpopulation of subjects eligible for lipid-lowering treatment. A subpopulation of 15,484 subjects without known hypertension and coronary heart disease with normal blood pressure measurements were chosen from a total of 50,111 participants of the SPES study.

Increased variability of the coupling interval of premature ventricular beats may help to identify high-risk patients with coronary artery disease.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics and predictive value of the variability of coupling interval of ventricular premature beats (VPBs) for cardiac mortality in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).

Background: Frequent VPBs have been linked to an increased risk for cardiac death in patients with coronary artery disease. It is unknown whether analysis of coupling interval of VPBs from ambulatory ECG recordings can be used for risk statification in these patients.

Age-adjustment of HRV measures and its prognostic value for risk assessment in patients late after myocardial infarction.

The Aims Of Our Study Were: (1) to establish the normal limit of the heart rate variability (HRV) indices in a healthy population and in its four age-related subgroups, including a new HRV index, HRV fraction; and (2) to analyse the frequency and predictive value of abnormally low HRV in a population of post-infarction patients in respect to the cut-points chosen (raw or age-adjusted).

Methods: Normal population of 296 healthy subjects (81 f, 215 m, aged 47+/-10 years) and post-infarction population of 298 patients (>3 months after acute MI, 65 f, 233 m, aged 56+/-10) were examined. The normal population was divided into 4 subsets based on age at entry: <35, 35-44, 45-54 and >54 years.