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EKG may not indicate accurate status of patient
By: Thomas H. Maugh II
Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2001
Doctors at Wayne State University in Detroit have
found that patients with normal EKGs after a heart attack are about three
times as likely to die as was previously thought, a finding that suggests
the patients should be given much more aggressive treatment.
An abnormal EKG is one of the primary signs of a heart attack. Such
patients are normally given intensive treatment, such as angioplasty,
bypass surgery and blood-thinning drugs. But some patients have a
seemingly normal EKG. Their heart attack is detected by the presence in
blood of enzymes released by damaged heart tissue. Because their EKGs are
normal, however, physicians have usually given these patients only minimal
treatment.
Dr. Robert Welch and his colleagues at Wayne State compared 30,759 heart
attack patients with normal EKGs with 222,875 with abnormal EKGs. Those
with normal readings were, in fact, 41% less likely to die while
hospitalized than those with abnormal readings, the team reported in the
Oct. 24 Journal of the American Medical Assn., but researchers had
expected the difference to be much greater.
Overall, 1,752 of the patients with normal EKGs died, about three times as
many as had been predicted based on earlier, smaller studies.
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