Determinants of electrocardiographic and spatial vectorcardiographic descriptors of ventricular repolarization in normal subjects

Abstract

he link between the dispersion of ventricular recovery times and arrhythmias has previously been demonstrated.(1) QT dispersion has been used to quantify the dispersion of ventricular refractoriness from the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram.(2) However, not only the accuracy and reproducibility of the "dispersion " indexes,(3) but also the presence of a direct link between the heterogeneity of ventricular repolarization and QT dispersion(4) has been challenged recently. Several studies have now focused on the spatial T-loop morphology features as a more accurate measure of the repolarization heterogeneity.(4-7) Although the correlation between QT dispersion and the T-loop morphology features has previously been evaluated,(8) there are no adequate data on the determinants of the spatial vectorcardiographic (VCG) descriptors of ventricular repolarization in normal subjects. The objective of the present study was to assess the clinical determinants of the electrocardiographic (ECG) and spatial VCG descriptors of ventricular repolarization in a population of young, healthy men.