The American journal of cardiology
-
Comparative Study
An exponential formula for heart rate dependence of QT interval during exercise and cardiac pacing in humans: reevaluation of Bazett's formula.
A new exponential formula to characterize the human RR-QT relation was evaluated in comparison with Bazett's formula in 16 subjects: 10 healthy, normal men (ages 18 to 30 years) who exercised on a stationary bicycle, and 6 patients (ages 50 to 80 years; 2 women and 4 men) with rate-programmable VVI pacemakers whose rates were changed by an external programmer. The RR and QT intervals for heart rate in the range of 50 to 180 beats/min were measured from electrocardiographic tracings recorded at a paper speed of 100 mm/s. ⋯ This analysis confirmed that F1 is the best model among the formulas tested and F4 (Bazett's formula) is the least acceptable for both exercised and paced groups. The deviations from Bazett's formula were more striking for the paced group than for the exercised group, as reflected by the mean-squared residual values for F4 (715 +/- 86 for the paced group vs 384 +/- 41 for the exercised group, p less than 0.005).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
-
The utility of Bayes' theorem in the noninvasive diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) was analyzed in 147 patients who underwent electrocardiographic stress testing, thallium-201 perfusion imaging and coronary angiography. Eighty-nine patients had typical anginal chest discomfort and 58 had atypical chest pain. Sensitivity and specificity of the tests and prevalence of CAD at each level of testing were tabulated and compared with the results generated from Bayes' theorem. ⋯ However, the probabilities calculated from Bayes' theorem when used for sequential testing are remarkably close to the tabulated data. Thus, Bayes' theorem is useful clinically despite some evidence of test dependence. Sequential test analysis by Bayes' theorem is most useful in establishing or ruling out a diagnosis when the pretest prevalence is approximately 50% and when the 2 tests are concordant.