title: Diagnostic performance of electrocardiography in the assessment of significant coronary artery disease and its anatomical size in comparison with coronary angiography.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Current study addressed the predictive value of 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) in patients with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD).
  
  
  METHODS
  Four hundred consecutive patients with new onset of chest pain were studied. A resting standard 12-lead ECG was recorded and all patients underwent coronary angiography.
  
  
  RESULTS
  ECG correctly detected significant stenosis in 176 out of 400 patients with an overall sensitivity per patient of 51.5% and specificity per patient of 66.1%. Based on artery analysis, ECG had the highest and lowest sensitivity for the detection of involvement in LAD (37.3%) and RCA (25.8%), respectively. ROC curve analysis showed that ECG changes were not good indicators of coronary arteries involvement with areas under the ROC curves 0.586 (for LAD artery), 0.524 (for RCA artery) and 0.530 (for LCX artery).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  ECG has low partial sensitivity and specificity for predicting coronary artery stenosis with accuracy ranged 58.5 to 62.0 percent based on coronary artery analysis.
authors.affiliation: Resident of Cardiology, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
authors.forename: Solmaz
authors.initials: S
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authors.forename: Mansour
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moazenzadeh
authors.forename: Hamidreza
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rashidinejad
authors.forename: Mehrdad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sheikhvatan
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