Prevalence of Cardiac Arrhythmia Disorders in Patients with Myocardial Infarction Admitted to CCU Ward in the Vasei Hospital of Sabzevar

Introduction: Myocardial infarction is one of the most common diseases in Iran. Cardiac arrhythmia has been reported as the most common cause of death in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Given the importance of arrhythmias, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of cardiac arrhythmia in patients with acute myocardial infarction admitted to the CCU of Vasei hospital in Sabzevar, Iran

Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 132 patients with myocardial infarction, which were admitted to the CCU of Vasei hospital in Sabzevar city during 24 months from 2009 to 2011. Patients were selected by convenient non- randomly sampling. Demographic data and medical history of patients were collected using a questionnaire. A check list was applied for recording infarction and arrhythmias diagnosed by electrocardiogram, the 24-hour monitoring of the patients and72 hours after hospitalization. Data was analyzed by SPSS ver11.5; descriptive and analytical statistics including Chi-square test, ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test were used for statistical purposes.

Results: A total number of 59.1% of patients had arrhythmia; where 19.6% of them had ventricular premature beats and 17.4% had episodes of ventricular tachycardia. The results showed that there was a significant relationship between the location of heart attack and type of arrhythmias (?2 14.4, p=0.002), there was no statically significance relationship between age, gender and type of arrhythmias (P> 0.05).

Conclusion: Because of the higher incidence of premature ventricular arrhythmia than others, hence, more awareness of the risk factors and treatment of these arrhythmias are necessary for medical and nursing staff.

Keywords: Acute myocardial infarction, Premature ventricular complexes, Arrhythmias