Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Considering the rates of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and pump failure death (PFD) in chronic heart failure (CHF) patients and the cost-effectiveness of their preventing treatments, identification of CHF patients at risk is an important challenge. In this work, we studied the prognostic performance of the combination of an index potentially related to dispersion of repolarization restitution (Deltaalpha), an index quantifying T-wave alternans (IAA) and the slope of heart rate turbulence (TS) for classification of SCD and PFD. METHODS: Holter ECG recordings of 597 CHF patients with sinus rhythm enrolled in the MUSIC study were analyzed and Deltaalpha, IAA and TS were obtained. A strategy was implemented using support vector machines (SVM) to classify patients in three groups: SCD victims, PFD victims and other patients (the latter including survivors and victims of non-cardiac causes). Cross-validation was used to evaluate the performance of the implemented classifier. RESULTS: Deltaalpha and IAA, dichotomized at 0.035 (dimensionless) and 3.73 muV, respectively, were the ECG markers most strongly associated with SCD, while TS, dichotomized at 2.5 ms/RR, was the index most strongly related to PFD. When separating SCD victims from the rest of patients, the individual marker with best performance was Deltaalpha>/=0.035, which, for a fixed specificity (Sp) of 90%, showed a sensitivity (Se) value of 10%, while the combination of Deltaalpha and IAA increased Se to 18%. For separation of PFD victims from the rest of patients, the best individual marker was TS </= 2.5 ms/RR, which, for Sp=90%, showed a Se of 26%, this value being lower than Se=34%, produced by the combination of Deltaalpha and TS. Furthermore, when performing SVM classification into the three reported groups, the optimal combination of risk markers led to a maximum Sp of 79% (Se=18%) for SCD and Sp of 81% (Se=14%) for PFD. CONCLUSIONS: The results shown in this work suggest that it is possible to efficiently discriminate SCD and PFD in a population of CHF patients using ECG-derived risk markers like Deltaalpha, TS and IAA.

Abstract:

The post extrasystolic T wave change (PEST) is an electrocardiographic phenomenon in which the morphology of the normal T wave is altered for a short time after a ventricular ectopic beat (VEB). It has been observed in patients with other cardiac pathologies but it has not been proposed as a risk index for cardiac death. Since PEST seems to be potentiated in patients with depression of myocardial contractility, we hypothesize that PEST could be used to predict pump failure death (PFD) in patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). For the purpose of quantifying PEST, the parameters morphological change onset (MCO) and morphological change slope (MCS) were introduced. The MUSIC study was used to test the hypothesis. The patients in the study were separated according to its cause of death and comparisons of each cause against the others (including survivors) were carried out. In addition, the parameters MCO and MCS were divided into subgroups us- ing optimal values obtained from the corresponding ROC curves with the aim of analyzing predictability with respect to PFD. The results showed that no significant differences could be established and the proposed parameters do not seem to be related to any kind of cardiac death.