[Findings on standard electrocardiograms of elderly in-patients with diagnosis other than cardiac].
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the frequency of cardiac arrhythmias, conduction disturbances and other electrocardiographic abnormalities in elderly in-patients without clinical evidence of heart disease, and in relation to different age groups. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram recordings. METHODS: Resting electrocardiograms of 595 in-patients aged 65 years and older, without cardiac diagnoses, over a period of one year were examined. There were 148 subjects aged from 65 to 69 years (group I of age), 258 from 70 to 79 (group II), 189 older than 80 (group III). RESULTS: Abnormal ECGs were in 108 (73%) subjects of group I of age, 199 (77%) of group II, 174 (92%) of group III (between group I and III, and group II and III: p-value < 0.01). Conduction disturbances were observed in 200 (33.6%) patients: 65 (10.9%) had right bundle branch block, 59 (9.9%) first-degree atrioventricular block. Supraventricular arrhythmias were found in 117 (19.6%) patients: 65 (11%) had atrial premature beats, 40 (6.7%) atrial fibrillation. Ventricular arrhythmias were seen in 65 (10.9%) patients: simplex ventricular premature beats in 55 (9.2%), complex in 10 (1.7%). CONCLUSIONS: The variation of frequency of ventricular premature beats between age group I and III, and of first-degree AV block between age group II and III was at p-value < 0.05. Our results indicate that the prevalence of electrocardiographic abnormalities in elderly subjects without other clinical manifestations of heart disease is very high and some of these increase significantly with the age.