Nearly 60 years Early Repolarization(ER), has been considered a benign electrocardiographic finding and a sign of health.
Recently studies have reported an associated risk of sudden cardiac arrest with early repolarization. Even in athletes the ER pattern have now been reported to indicate an increased risk of arrhythmic death. The physicians are begin to question the longer considered benign nature of ER.
It have been suggested that early repolarization syndrome may exist on a continuous spectrum of disease, from asymptomatic to malignant.
The aim of this project were to identify electrcardiographic parameter which may aid the physicians in identify individuals with early repolarization who at risk of sudden cardiac death.
ECG recordings from 40 healthy subjects, 66 male athletes and 33 male cardiac survivors during hypothermia were manually analysis.
Mean beats were generate in order to enhance the signal to-noise-ratio. 15 parameters, five parameters for J-wave, Slur and notch were investigated i order to quantify differences, in the timing, duration and morphology between the populations. The parameters were calculated based on ER fiducial points. These point were manually annotated.
Manual classification of subjects with or without ER were preformed.
Early repolarization were frequently observed in athletes compared to the normal age matched population(35;57 vs 23%. The highest prevalence were found in the survivors of cardiac arrest during hypothermia( 76,5) \% The prevalence of ER in the different groups were significant different from each other.
This study showed that parameters of the ER patterns due to duration, timing and morphology of competitive athletes not significantly differs from non-athletes. However there is a tendency that the ER patterns of competitive athletes have similar characteristics and morphology to the ER patterns seen in survivors of cardiac arrest during hypothermia. To verify the state hypothesis further research is needed.