Higher risk of coronary heart disease: Prediction by ECG possible
A latest report suggests that ECG may predict higher risk of coronary heart diseases among elderly people
By Dr. Syyed Ubaidussalam
People always get confused about the usefulness of medical tests. Many remain undecided as to whether these are beneficial for those people who have no symptoms of diseases or not. People try to escape the tests and physicians advise it.
A recently conducted research tells us that these tests may help us in improved prediction of possible disorders in many people. In University of California, San Francisco researchers studied two thousand, one hundred and ninety two (2192) people. The age of these people was between seventy and seventy nine years. They were without known cardiovascular disorders.
Basically the study was about the benefits of Electrocardiogram (ECG) in people without known cardiovascular diseases. Researchers collected information on adjudicated coronary heart disease (CHD) events during eight years of follow up. This study was conducted between 1997 and 1998 and between 2006 and 2007 AD.
At the beginning of the aforementioned study 23 percent of all participants had major electrocardiographic abnormalities, while 13 percent had minor ECG abnormalities. When the researchers followed up for eight years they found that three hundred fifty one (351) participants had coronary heart diseases. From these participants ninety six (96) died due to coronary heart disease, one hundred one (101) had acute myocardial infarction (MI) and one hundred fifty four (154) were hospitalized for angina or CHD.
The study tells us that ECG is useful for prediction of coronary heart diseases, but this result is not final. There is a need to study more. Researchers wrote in the study that risk prediction is less accurate in old age persons compared with middle aged adults. Wide availability of ECG and ECG data may be useful to improve coronary heart disease risk prediction.
A team member of the research team says, “our data do not permit one to say any thing about clinical practice. It is only an association study. So we need to do more research on clinical outcomes.”
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