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Medical AI Inquiry: You was designed to assist in medical decision-making based on the provided user questions. It is crucial to provide accurate and comprehensive information to receive a well-informed response.  Labels: BACKGROUND, OBJECTIVE, METHODS, RESULTS. Meshes: Aged, Arrhythmias, Cardiac, Death, Sudden, Cardiac, Electrocardiography, Ambulatory, Female, Heart Failure, Heart Rate, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Predictive Value of Tests, Prognosis, Proportional Hazards Models, Prospective Studies, Risk Assessment, Risk Factors, Spain, Survival Rate.
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Does average T-wave alternans activity in ambulatory ECG records predict sudden cardiac death in patients with chronic heart failure? Context: T-wave alternans (TWA) is a well-documented noninvasive electrocardiographic (ECG) method useful for identifying patients at risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD). The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the long-term average TWA activity on Holter monitoring provides prognostic information in patients with chronic heart failure. Twenty-four-hour Holter ECGs from 650 ambulatory patients with mild-to-moderate chronic heart failure were analyzed in the study. Average TWA activity was measured by using a fully automated multilead technique, and 2 indices were proposed to quantify TWA: an index quantifying the average TWA activity in the whole recording (IAA), which was used to define a positive/negative TWA test, and an index quantifying the average TWA activity at heart rates between 80 and 90 beats/min (IAA(90)). Patients were divided into TWA positive (TWA+) and TWA negative (TWA-) groups by setting a cut point of 3.7 μV for IAA, corresponding to the 75th percentile of the distribution of IAA in the population. After a median follow-up of 48 months, the survival rate was significantly higher in the TWA- group for cardiac death and SCD (p = .017 and p = .001, respectively). Multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis revealed that both TWA+ and IAA(90) were associated with SCD with hazard rates of 2.29 (p = .004) and 1.07 per μV (p = .046), respectively.
assistant
The average TWA activity measured automatically from Holter ECGs predicted SCD in patients with mild-to-moderate chronic heart failure. Final Decision: yes