Electrocardiographic findings in patients with polycythemia vera.
BACKGROUND
The 12-lead surface electrocardiogram (ECG) is a useful tool to predict both atrial and ventricular arrhythmias via P-wave and QT measurements and its derivatives. Polycythemia vera (PV) is a chronic myeloproliferative disorder associated with cardiovascular events. The aim of this study was to assess ECG findings of patients with PV.


METHODS
Sixty patients with PV (34 male, mean age 58±11 years) and 60 age and gender-matched healthy volunteers were enrolled into the study. From the 12-lead surface ECG, P-wave and both conventional QT measurements and transmyocardial repolarization parameters (T(peak)-T(end) interval (T(p)-T(e)) and derivatives) were evaluated digitally by two experienced cardiologists. In addition, a novel parameter, Pi was calculated digitally as the standard deviation of the P-wave duration across the 12 ECG leads.


RESULTS
QT duration and corrected QT interval were significantly longer in the PV group compared to healthy controls (p<0.01 and p<0.01, respectively). The T(p)-T(e) was longer and the T(p)-T(e)/QT ratio was significantly higher in the PV group compared to the controls. P-wave analyses showed that all P-wave parameters including Pmax, Pmin, P dispersion, and Pi were significantly prolonged in PV patients compared to the controls. The increase of both T(p)-T(e )and P max in the PV group was independent of age, BMI, diabetes and hypertension, gender, systolic blood pressure, hemoglobin, hematocrit, left atrial dimension, left ventricular end-diastolic diameter and early deceleration time in a univariate analysis of co-variance model (F=11.097, p=0.001 and F=31.537, p=0.0001, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
The present study demonstrated that PV may be associated with electrocardiographic abnormalities of both atrium and ventricle.
Department of Cardiology, Meram School of Medicine, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey.
Mehmet
M
Kayrak
Kadir
K
Acar
Enes Elvin
EE
Gul
Turyan
T
Abdulhalikov
Murat
M
Bağlıcaklıoğlu
Osman
O
Sonmez
Zeynettin
Z
Kaya
Hatem
H
Arı
D000368:Aged; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D006325:Heart Atria / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006352:Heart Ventricles / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011087:Polycythemia Vera / Q000503:physiopathology*