Authors: Vincenzo Russo Ernesto Ammendola Ilaria De Crescenzo Danilo Ricciardi Pasquale Capuano Assunta Topatino Ludovico Docimo Lucio Santangelo Raffaele Calabrò
Publish Date: 2007/07/06
Volume: 17, Issue: 7, Pages: 857-865
Abstract
Weightstable obese subjects have an increased risk of arrhythmias and sudden death even in the absence of cardiac dysfunction and the risk of sudden cardiac death SCD with increasing weight is seen in both genders The mechanism of unexplained deaths in obese patients is still unclear and may be related to ventricular repolarization abnormalities The aim of this study is to determine the effect of severe obesity on spatial and transmural ventricular repolarization and to clarify the influence of bariatric surgery with a consequent substantial weight loss on arrhythmogenic substrate in the morbidly obese populationFor the study we enrolled 100 severely obese patients 50 agematched nonobese healthy subjects were also recruited as controls All subjects underwent conventional 12lead electrocardiography for analysis of spatial and transmural ventricular repolarization assessed by corrected QT dispersion QTcd corrected JT dispersion JTcd and transmural dispersion of repolarization TDR All subjects underwent bariatric surgery and were resubmitted to electrocardiographic biochemical and anthropometric examination 12 months postoperativelySeverely obese patients had greater values in QTcd JTcd and TDR than the normalweight controls Bariatric surgery reduced significantly the QTcd value JTcd value and TDR value There was a significant correlation between decrease of heterogeneity of repolarization indexes QTd JTd and TDR and bariatric surgeryinduced weight lossIn severely obese patients surgicallyinduced weight loss is associated with significant decrease in the heterogeneity of ventricular repolarization The reduction of spatial QTcd JTcd and transmural dispersion of repolarization TDR may be of clinical significance by reducing the risk of potentially fatal arrhythmias in morbidly obese subjects
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