Electrocardiography in the diagnosis of ventricular hypertrophy in patients with chronic renal disease.

Background: Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is an independent predictor of cardiovascular risk, and its characterization and prevalence in chronic renal disease (CRD) should be further studied.

Objective: To establish the diagnosis of LVH in patients with stage-5 CRD using six different electrocardiographic criteria, and to correlate them with left ventricular mass index (LVMI) as obtained by echocardiography.

Methods: Cross-sectional study including 100 patients (58 men and 42 women, mean age 46.2 + or - 14.0 years) with CRD of all causes undergoing hemodialysis (HD) for at least six months. Electrocardiography (ECG) and echocardiography were performed in all patients, always up to one hour after the end of the HD sessions.

Results: LVH was detected in 83 patients (83%), of whom 56 (67.4%) had the concentric pattern and 27 (32.6%) the eccentric pattern of LVH. Diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of all the electrocardiographic methods studied were higher than 50%. Using Pearson's linear correlation for LVMI, only the Sokolow-Lyon voltage criterion did not show a > or = 0.50 coefficient. Calculation of the likelihood ratio, in turn, showed that ECG has a discriminatory power for the diagnosis of LVH in the population studied, with emphasis on the Cornell-product and Romhilt-Estes criteria. No correlation was observed between LVMI and QTc and QTc dispersion.

Conclusion: ECG is a useful, efficient, and highly reproducible method for the diagnosis of LVH in HD patients. In this population, the Cornell-product proved to be the most reliable criterion for the detection of LVH.