Ventricular late potentials in patients with mitral valve prolapse

To determine frequency of ventricular late potentials in healthy individuals and in patients with mitral valve prolapse and to identify patients with Mitral Valve Prolapse at high risk of sudden death based upon ventricular late potentials. Case - Control study. The study was conducted in Army Medical College and Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology, Rawalpindi from March 2005 to February 2006. A total of 37 patients with mitral valve prolapse and 37 matching controls were included in the study. Patients with confirm diagnoses of mitral valve prolapse on echocardiography were selected. After recording their conventional ECGs, they underwent exercise tolerance test on treadmill. Signal averaged electrocardiogram of every patient was recorded using computer software for the presence or otherwise of ventricular late potentials. The data was entered into SPSS version 10. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate means and standard deviations while paired sample 't' test at confidence interval of 95% was used to compare mean values for statistical significance. Nine [24.32%] out of 37 cases and only 1 [2.7%] out of 37 controls had ventricular late potentials on their signal averaged electrocardiogram. Ventricular late potentials are useful non-invasive predictive markers of sudden cardiac death in patients with mitral valve prolapse