Is Ventricular Arrhythmias the End for All Conditions?

Abstract

Dear Editor, We read the article entitled Abnormal Dispersion of Ventricular Repolarization as a Risk Factor in Patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus: Tp-e Interval, Tp-e/QTc Ratio by Unal Evren et al. with interest[1]. The authors evaluated the changes in Tp-e interval, Tp-e/QT and Tp-e/corrected QT (QTc) ratios, and traditional electrocardiographic features of electrical dispersion in adults infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and their study revealed that the cTp-e interval, Tp-e/QT and Tp-e/QTc ratios were prolonged and correlated to the severity of the disease in HIV-infected patients. Previous studies have revealed that the Tp-e interval, the Tpeak-Tend interval (Tpe), the interval from the T-wave peak to the end of the T wave, has been related to arrhythmogenesis, is specified as an index of totaldispersion of repolarization[2]. Prolonged Tp-e interval is predictable for ventricular arrhythmias and mortality [3]. Unal et al. showed that HIV-infected patients receiving combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) were associated withlonger Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QTc ratio and correlated positively with the duration of disease and the electrophysiologicalabnormalities, and negatively with CD4 count[4]. There were no informations about medical status of patients with HIV, duration of the disease and why hsCRP is higher in patients' group. The patients were in active phases of infection. We think that these are important datas for results of the study. We thank the authors for adding this article to the literature.