title: Predictors of early death after acute myocardial infarction: two months follow-up.
abstract: Clinical variables and the results of non-invasive tests (exercise test, echocardiogram, gated equilibrium radionuclide ventriculography and 24 h ECG) were recorded in a series of 202 patients who left the hospital alive after an acute myocardial infarction. The short term (two months) predictive value of all these data was prospectively assessed by uni- and multi-variate analysis. The best correlation with early death was observed with the variables related to the extent of infarction and left ventricular dysfunction, namely: early clinical signs of heart failure, high peak CK-MB level, complete bundle branch block, increased cardiothoracic ratio on chest X-Ray, number of Mets reached during the stress test, echocardiographic dyskinesia index, and decreased left ventricular ejection fraction as measured by radionuclide ventriculography. Using multi-variate stepwise discriminant analysis, the following independent prognostic factors appeared by order of entry: early clinical signs of heart failure, peak CK-MB level and cardiothoracic ratio on chest X-Ray. These results highlight the short-term predictive value of the data related to left ventricular dysfunction and especially of simple clinical data for patients surviving an acute myocardial infarction.
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004452:Echocardiography; D004562:Electrocardiography; D005080:Exercise Test; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000401:mortality; D011379:Prognosis; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging