Electrocardiographic findings in obese subjects

Obesity is often associated with cardiovascular pathology. Cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death are reported for obese subjects during severe caloric restriction and weight loss. Also obese patients without dieting are at increased risk of arrhythmias and sudden death in the absence of cardiac dysfunction. This is probably due to a delayed cardiac repolarization and prolongation of heart rate corrected electrocardiographic QT interval (QTc).

This paper examined the electro-cardiographic findings of a group of obese young males compared with normal patients and whether QTc interval duration was associated with relative body mass index. All patients were free of cardiovascular diseases and came to the First Aid Department for other pathology than cardiac. We studied 109 subjects (50 obese males and 59 normal males; aged 43.4+/-14.8 and 42.8+/-9.8 years respectively).

Obese patients presented a shorter PQ, a prevalence of left cardiac axis, a higher heart rate, a longer QT, but not QTc compared with normal males. There was no correlation between QTc and obesity.

This study noticed that obese patients present some differences in electrocardiographic findings compared with normal subjects and that these alterations are not ascribed to cardiac repolarization. This is probably due to the young age of the studied groups.