T Wave Alternans and Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia Risk Stratification: a Review

Overview

Journal Indian Pacing Electrophysiol J

Date 2006 Sep 1

PMID 16943959

Citations 4

Authors

Masahiko Takagi

Junichi Yoshikawa

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is one of the leading causes of mortality in industrialized countries. Thus, identifying patients at high risk of SCD is an important goal. T wave alternans (TWA) is a new method for identifying patients with lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmias, and is dependent on heart rate. The maximal predictive accuracy is achieved at heart rates between 100 and 120 bpm, so that TWA is usually measured during exercise, pharmacological stress, or atrial pacing. It has been shown that TWA has high sensitivity and negative predictive value for predicting SCD after myocardial infarction and is also useful for predicting SCD in patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy. Although the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) is now the primary therapy for preventing SCD, it is difficult to identify those patients who are susceptible to lethal ventricular tachyarrhythmias for primary prevention. In the prediction of SCD, TWA can be used as a screening test of appropriate patients for further electrophysiological examination and therapy.

Citing Articles

Arrhythmia Detection based on Morphological and Time-frequency Features of T-wave in Electrocardiogram.

Zeraatkar E, Kermani S, Mehridehnavi A, Aminzadeh A, Zeraatkar E, Sanei H J Med Signals Sens. 2012; 1(2):99-106.

PMID: 22606664 PMC: 3342620.

A nonparametric surrogate-based test of significance for T-wave alternans detection.

Nemati S, Abdala O, Monasterio V, Yim-Yeh S, Malhotra A, Clifford G IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2010; 58(5):1356-64.

PMID: 20409986 PMC: 2991534. DOI: 10.1109/TBME.2010.2047859.

Microvolt T-wave alternans as a predictor of mortality and severe arrhythmias in patients with left-ventricular dysfunction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

van der Avoort C, Filion K, Dendukuri N, Brophy J BMC Cardiovasc Disord. 2009; 9:5.

PMID: 19175926 PMC: 2653469. DOI: 10.1186/1471-2261-9-5.

Current developments in microvolt T-wave alternans.

Sredniawa B, Musialik-Lydka A, Kowalczyk J, Kalarus Z Indian Pacing Electrophysiol J. 2006; 6(4):214-25.

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