The letter from Dr. Venkatesan (1) correctly notes that several months before publishing our article (2) in Anesthesia & Analgesia, Yildirim et al. (3) had published an article regarding the influence of desflurane on some variables of cardiac ventricular repolarization. Yildirim et al.’s paper was published after our manuscript had been submitted to Anesthesia & Analgesia, and we had no knowle...

OBJECTIVE Increased QT interval dispersion (QTd) is an electrocardiographic parameter shown to be associated with malignant ventricular arrhythmias and sudden death, and QT dispersion corrected for heart rate (QTc) has emerged as a potentially important predictor of cardiac death. Increased QTd has been detected to be directly related to thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels in overt hypothy...

1. An association has been reported between QT interval abnormalities and cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy in diabetic patients. The QT interval abnormalities reflect local inhomogeneities of ventricular recovery time and may be related to an imbalance in cardiac sympathetic innervation. Sympathetic innervation of the heart can be visualized and quantified by single-photon emission-computed ...

Increased QT dispersion seems to be related to an increased risk of arrhythmia and sudden death, a common cause of mortality in hemodialysis (HD) patients. Increase in sympathetic tone has been documented in HD patients. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of changes in the autonomic tone on QT dispersion (QTd) in HD patients. Twenty HD patients (M/F 13/7; age, mean ±SD, 28 ± 10 y...

Introduction: Cigarette smoking increases the risk of sudden cardiac death. Smoking may predispose to ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac death by altering ventricular repolarization and enhancing sympathetic nervous system activity. We aimed to study the effects of smoking on ventricular repolarization. Methods: We studied 47 healthy subjects. 24 long-term heavy smokers (10 women, mean...

Objectives: To evaluate whether reduced heart rate variability (HRV), prolonged QTc interval, or increased QT dispersion (QTD) are predictors of mortality in the general diabetic and nondiabetic population. Research Design and Methods: Nondiabetic (n=1560) and diabetic (n=160) subjects aged 55-74 years were assessed to determine whether reduced HRV, prolonged QTc interval, and increased QTD may...

UNLABELLED Myocardial hypertrophy (MH) due to cardiac pathology is characterized by an increase in QT interval duration and dispersion, while the findings for exercise-induced myocardial hypertrophy are contradictory. The majority of published research findings have not explored this relationship, but there have only been a few conducted studies using 24-hour ECG monitoring. The aim of the stud...

OBJECTIVE The interlead variation in duration of the Q-T interval on the surface electrocardiogram (Q-T interval dispersion [QTd]) has been shown to predict mortality in type 2 diabetic patients. We evaluated the prevalence of QTd prolongation in the EURODIAB population and its relation to corrected Q-T interval (QTc), sex, age, duration of diabetes, blood glucose control, and complications. RE...

Objective: To evaluate the relation between QT variables and disproportion of left ventricular wall hypertrophy in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Design: Retrospective analysis of the results of echocardiography and electrocardiography. Setting: University hospital (tertiary referral centre). Patients: 70 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy were divided into four groups accord...