Background: Prolonged QRS duration (QRSd) is associated with increased mortality after myocardial infarction (MI). Only little data exist about its predictive ability and relationships to clinical variables in the present era of active treatment of myocardial ischemia and cardiac dysfunction. We investigated whether QRSd in high-resolution methods and standard ECG predict arrhythmic events and cardiac death in post-infarction patients with cardiac dysfunction and how it relates to clinical variables, with a special emphasis on history of previous MI.
Methods and results: Patients (n = 158) with acute MI and cardiac dysfunction had magnetocardiography (MCG), signal-averaged ECG (SAECG), and ECG registered at discharge. Patients with a previous MI had significantly longer QRSd although their left ventricular function was almost similarly impaired. During the mean follow-up of 50 +/- 15 (range 1-72) months, 32 patients died and 17 (53%) of the deaths were classified as cardiac. Eighteen patients had an arrhythmic event. QRSd >121 ms in MCG and >114 ms in SAECG were significant predictors of arrhythmic events and cardiac death, whereas QRSd in ECG predicted only cardiac death. In multivariate analysis, QRSd in MCG (hazard ratio (HR) = 3.6, P = 0.007) and SAECG (HR = 4.6, P = 0.016) predicted only arrhythmic events, whereas QRSd in ECG was an independent predictor of cardiac death.
Conclusions: Prolonged QRSd in MCG and SAECG are powerful indicators of the arrhythmia substrate in post-infarction patients with cardiac dysfunction, whereas prolonged QRSd in standard ECG associates with increased risk of cardiac death.