title: Polarcardiographic criteria for infarction evaluated by angiocardiography.
abstract: Out of a series of 1000 consecutive patients studied by angiocardiography, two groups were selected on the basis of the probability of having suffered myocardial infarction: an infarction group of 324 cases, and a non-infarction group of 112 cases. Members of the infarction group had complete occlusion of at least one major coronary artery; members of the non-infarction group had less than 50% occlusion in all coronary arteries, normal hemodynamics, and negative histories of infarction. The diagnostic performances of the independently-read 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECGs) and the polarcardiograms (PCGs) were evaluated in terms of sensitivity, specificity, validity and risk ratio. The performance of the ECG was significantly lower than the PCG. Corresponding figures were 56%, 99%, 67%, and 1.67 for the ECG, and 75%, 91%, 80%, and 2.23 for the PCG. There is a 99.9% probability that the PCG can detect at least 21% more cases of infarction than the ECG can.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000790:Angiocardiography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis*; D014672:Vectorcardiography