p-wave dispersion in patients with major thalassemia

abstract background prolonged p-wave duration and p-wave dispersion indicate interatrial conduction disturbance and early predict arrhythmia especially atrial fibrillation. iron deposition in the atrial tissue might prolonged the atrial conduction time, and this study evaluated the p-wave prolongation and increased p-wave dispersion in these patients. materials and methods fifty patients with major thalassemia and fifty healthy controls were studied, which age and sex matched between cases and controls. all patients and the controls were examined and had an ecg. the p-wave dispersion defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum p-wave duration. p-wave dispersion was compared between two groups. student^,s t-test and pearson^,s correlation were used as needed. results there was a significant difference between the p-wave dispersion of the 2 groups (p=0.019). maximum p-wave duration and p-wave dispersion in patients had strong correlation with age (disease duration). p-wave duration and p-wave dispersion had no correlation with regularity or irregularity of desferal use. conclusion maximum p-wave duration and p-wave dispersion were seen in older cases, which significantly get prolonged. this could show that the myocardial involvement and dysfunction was probably more in the older patients.