Ventricular bigeminy characterization in 24-h Holter monitoring from Andersen-Tawil patients: An initial proof of concept versus patients with ischemic heart disease

Abstract

AimTo characterize ventricular bigeminy from 24-h Holter recordings of Andersen-Tawil syndrome (ATS) patients, a first comparison with a large database of post-myocardial infarction (post-MI) patients with frequent premature ventricular complexes (PVC) was performed. MethodsBaseline Holter recordings from 6 ATS1 patients and 618 post-MI patients were analyzed to assess total number of PVC, quantification of coupling intervals (CI), total number of bigeminy episodes, and percentage of PVC in bigeminy. ResultsA non-significant difference in total number of PVCs, mean CI and CI standard deviation was found. The median number of episodes of bigeminy (1038 vs 1; p = 0.004) and of PVC in bigeminy (51.1 vs 0.1%; p = 0.002) was significantly higher in ATS1 patients. Having ≥42 episodes of bigeminy or ≥ 36.1% of PVC in bigeminy distinguish PVC from ATS from post-MI patients with a sensitivity and specificity >80%. ConclusionIn this first approach, patients with ATS had a characteristic burden of episodes of ventricular bigeminy, compared with post-MI patients.