Incidence of Atrial Infarction in Acute ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction and Its Complications

BACKGROUND: Atrial infarction, which frequently occurs together with ventricular infarction, is underappreciated and understudied. The aim of the study is to identify atrial infarction in acute ST elevation myocardial infarction using ECG based on Liu et all criteria and to correlate the associated arrhythmias and other complications. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a cross sectional analytical study conducted in a tertiary care institution in South India. The sample size was calculated to be 137 patients with STEMI using OpenEpi v3.0 Study participants who satisfied the eligibility criteria were recruited consecutively. After obtaining informed consent, information regarding sociodemographic characteristics, relevant history, blood pressure, ECG, ECHO, Angiogram parameters, complications and outcomes were recorded. Data entry was done using Microsoft Excel 2016. Data analysis was done using SPSS Version 20.0. (77) Statistical significance was considered when P value was less than 0.05. RESULTS: Out of 137 individuals with STEMI who were recruited for the current study, 53 (38.7%) study participants had atrial infarction. More than 60% of the study participants belonged to 51 – 70 years age group, while around 7.3 % belonged to age group less than 40 years. Nearly three out of every four study participants in the current study were males. nearly one third of the study participants had both diabetes and systemic hypertension as comorbidities. More than one fifth of the study participants had either hypokinesia of inferior, infero-septal or inferior, infero-septal and posterior wall. Anterior septal alone and anterior septal along with antero-lateral wall contributed for 6% of all study participants. The angiogram findings in the current showed that RCA, RCA dominant, mild RCA and distal RCA contributed to 21.8% of the total number of study participants who underwent angiogram. CONCLUSION: This study concludes that about one in every three cases of myocardial infarction might have atrial infarction. Regional wall abnormality and artery involved were found to be significant on comparison based on atrial infarction as well as complications. Further studies need to be conducted to explore on the results obtained from the current study