title: Cardiac rhythm in healthy elderly subjects.
abstract: To study the normal cardiac rhythm in elderly subjects we performed 24-h Holter monitoring on 94 subjects aged over 70 years. We had previously discarded those with cardiac disease by using history, physical examination, electrocardiography (ECG), chest X-radiography and Doppler echocardiography. The maximum, average and minimum heart rates were 113, 79 and 62, respectively, during the day, and 90, 64 and 53 during the night. Supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias were frequent (91% and 89.4%, respectively). Some 50% of the subjects had complex ventricular arrhythmias. Two subjects presented with sinus pauses of more than 2 s, and 4 had Wenckebach second-degree atrioventricular (AV) block. During a follow-up averaging 20.8 months, there were no deaths or symptoms of an arrhythmic origin.
authors.affiliation: Murcia University School of Medicine, Cardiology Department, Murcia General Hospital.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: García
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Valdés
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Sánchez
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Soria
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hernández
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vicente
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pérez
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Rodriguez
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001146:Arrhythmia, Sinus / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D005117:Cardiac Complexes, Premature / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006327:Heart Block / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D012907:Smoking / Q000009:adverse effects; D013617:Tachycardia, Supraventricular / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology