American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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Am. J. Crit. Care
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Observational Study
Performance of Automated Telemetry in Diagnosing QT Prolongation in Critically Ill Patients.
QT prolongation increases the risk of ventricular arrhythmia and is common among critically ill patients. The gold standard for QT measurement is electrocardiography. Automated measurement of corrected QT (QTc) by cardiac telemetry has been developed, but this method has not been compared with electrocardiography in critically ill patients. ⋯ QTc determination by telemetry has poor agreement and moderate correlation with electrocardiography. However, telemetry has an acceptable area under the curve in ROC analysis with tolerable sensitivity and specificity depending on the cutoff used to define prolonged QT. Cardiac telemetry should be used with caution in critically ill patients.