A study of corrected QT dispersion before and after haemodialysis in ischemic heart disease patients

Introduction: Patients with end stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis have high mortality⁽¹⁾. The mechanisms responsible for increased risk of sudden deaths is not clear. Haemodialysis patients have a wide variety of ECG abnormalities and in certain instances hemodialysis itself seems to be a cause of ECG changes and different kind of arrhythmias⁽⁴⁾. So the study to assess the effect of hemodialysis on QT interval in patients with end stage renal failure is taken up. Materials & methods: A cross sectional hospital based study was done on fifty adult chronic renal failure patients with end stage renal disease on haemodialysis for more than three months at associate hospitals of Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore Twelve-lead electrocardiographs were performed at 10mm/mv and 25mm/s using software based digital ECG recorder (Schiller Healthcare India Pvt Ltd.)10 minutes before and 10 min after a single hemodialysis session.The automatic QT interval was obtained. Statistical analysis was done using Students t-test and chi-square test. P value of ≤0.05 was considered significant. Discussion:This study demonstrates that QT interval increases significantly after hemodialysis. We also found out that the prolongation of QT, QT_c and QT_c dispersion are higher in the presence of ischemic heart disease.