Patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are prone to develop potentially life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia (VT) during the acute phase of the myocardial infarction.
1 It is still unclear what specific clinical variables are associated with these ventricular arrhythmias.
2,3 Studies performed before the era of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) demonstrated the clinical relevance of ventricular arrhythmias if occurring >48 hours after AMI.
4-6 Factors associated with the occurrence of ventricular activity in these patients were the presence of extensive myocardial damage, reduced LV function and formation of ventricular aneurysm.
6,7 Since myocardial ischaemia and necrosis due to coronary occlusion is the key element leading to ventricular arrhythmias, angiographic characteristics of AMI patients are of particular interest. However, studies investigating ventricular arrhythmias in AMI are hampered by the fact that most patients have been treated with thrombolytic therapy or no reperfusion therapy and therefore no detailed angiographic data are available.
2,3,8,9 We studied the correlates of clinical characteristics, angiographic data and the prevalence of ventricular arrhythmia, particularly VT, in the first 12 hours in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) treated with primary PCI. …
