title: Heart rate deceleration runs for postinfarction risk prediction.
abstract: A method for counting episodes of uninterrupted beat-to-beat heart rate decelerations was developed.
  
  
  METHODS
  The method was set up and evaluated using 24-hour electrocardiogram Holter recordings of 1455 (training sample) and 946 (validation sample) postinfarction patients. During a median follow-up of 24 months, 70, 46, and 19 patients of the training sample suffered from total, cardiac, and sudden cardiac mortality, respectively. In the validation sample, these numbers were 39, 25, and 15. Episodes of consecutive beat-to-beat heart rate decelerations (deceleration runs [DRs]) were characterized by their length.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Deceleration runs of 2 to 10 cycles were significantly less frequent in nonsurvivors. Multivariate model of DRs of 2, 4, and 8 cycles identified low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups. In these groups of the training sample, the total mortalities were 1.8%, 6.1%, and 24%, respectively. In the validation sample, these numbers were 1.8%, 4.1%, and 21.9%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Infrequent DRs during 24-hour Holter indicate high risk of postinfarction mortality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology-Intensive Therapy, University of Medical Sciences in Poznan, Poland.
authors.forename: Przemyslaw
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Guzik
authors.forename: Jaroslaw
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Piskorski
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Barthel
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bauer
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Müller
authors.forename: Nadine
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Junk
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ulm
authors.forename: Marek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Malik
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schmidt
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016757:Death, Sudden, Cardiac; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012044:Regression Analysis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D015996:Survival Rate