Objective: To know the early (30 days) and mid-term (6 months) clinical and paraclinical evolution of patients surviving an inferior infarct with or without precordial depression of the ST segment (RST).
Material and methods: We studied all patients with inferior myocardial infarction during 1998. Patients were divided in two groups according to the presence or absence of a significant and persistent low level of RST (> 2 mm for more than 24 h) at the precordial leads. We compared the clinical, paraclinical evolution and survival at 30 days and 6 months after infarction.
Results: We studied 127 patients, 93 of them had persistent RST depression in the precordial leads, whereas the other 34 only presented changes at the inferior wall. The study revealed that those patients with changes in the anterior wall had a slightly higher frequency of cardiac failure, conduction disorders, deterioration of the left ventricular function, and plurivascular coronary disease. Likewise, it was flaund that RST depression at the precordial leads induced a greater mortality at 6 months.
Conclusions: In patients with inferior myocardial infarction, the precordial depression of RST seems to be associated with an adverse clinical and paraclinical evolution, as well as a higher mortality. However, the differences are not statistically significant, therefore more studies are needed to elucidate this point.