Stefan Knecht
Germany
Research Article
Extended Electrocardiographic Poincare Analysis (EPA) for Better Identification of Patients with Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation
Author(s): Thomas Duning, Paulus Kirchhof, Heike Wersching, Thomas Hepp, Roland Reinhardt, Hubertus Heuer, Erich B. Ringelstein and Stefan KnechtThomas Duning, Paulus Kirchhof, Heike Wersching, Thomas Hepp, Roland Reinhardt, Hubertus Heuer, Erich B. Ringelstein and Stefan Knecht
Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) – be it permanent or paroxysmal – is the most frequent and most effectively treatable cause of stroke. However, when paroxysmal, even electrocardiography for 24 hours (24h-ECG) misses AF in more than 50% of cases. We assessed whether extended Poincaré analysis of ECG R-R intervals (EPA) can help to identify electrocardiographic remodeling suggestive of paroxysmal AF (PAF).
Methods: Twenty-nine patients with previously diagnosed PAF were re-assessed by 24h-ECG using conventional analysis and EPA based on a previously trained algorithm considering among other ratios of R-R interval duration, number of premature atrial complexes, approximate entropy, and standard deviation of Poincaré plots-axes. 24h-ECG from 21 healthy subjects without a history of AF served as negative, and 9 patients w.. View More»
