QT variability analysis for risk stratification in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy

Recently it could be demonstrated that systolic and diastolic blood pressure variability (BPV) as well as segmented Poincare plot analysis (SPPA) contribute to risk stratification in patients suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). The aim of this study was to further improve the risk stratification applying multivariate technique including QT variability (QTV). 56 low risk and 13 high risk DCM patients were enrolled and significantly separated by nearly all methods except traditional heart rate variability analysis. The optimum set of indices included the diastolic BPV index DBP_Shannon and the index QTV_log achieving an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) of 92%, sensitivity of 92.3% and specificity of 89.3%. Without BPV analysis the optimum multivariate approach including indices from SPPA and QTV achieved an AUC of 88.3%. Summarizing, we identified DCM patients with an increased risk of sudden cardiac death applying QTV analysis in a multivariate approach.