EXERCISE INDUCED VENTRICULAR TACHYCARDIA; PREVALENCE, CHARACTERISTICS & PROGNOSIS

Objective: To determine frequency of exercise induced ventricular tachycardia, its characteristics and prognosis. Design & duration: This is a cross sectional study completed in six months duration. Setting: Study was conducted in cardiology unit of Bahawal Victoria Hospital Bahawalpur. Patients & methods: Convenient probability sampling technique used. Healthy cases were included in the study. Exercise tolerance test done. Tachycardia noticed in all cases during exercise. Cardiac activity and ECG changes were observed. Patients of either gender, irrespective of age included in the study. Sample size was calculated using WHO sample size calculator. Frequency and percentage were calculated for qualitative variables. Mean, median and standard deviation calculated for quantitative variables. P-value less than 0.05 was considered significant. SPSS software version 21 was used for data analysis. Results: Total 700 apparently healthy cases were studied. Exercise tolerance test was done in all cases and out of them 50() cases showed ventricular tachycardia. There were 68% female, and 32% male among them. Mean age of subjects was 53.5±12.7 years. Most of the cases were above 50 years of age. Heart rate was 140-160 in 44% cases. Conclusion: Exercise induced ventricular tachycardia was observed in elderly people mostly having heart rate above 140/min and without any serious abnormality in cardiac activity while some of them showed coronary artery syndrome. Key words: Exercise tolerance test, ventricular tachycardia, coronary artery syndrome, prognosi