Prevalence of different echocardiographic abnormalities in a large Turkish workers population

We aimed to investigate the echocardiographic characteristics of workers with resting major electrocardiography (ECG) anomalies and risk factors of sudden cardiac death in the large Turkish workers population in different heavy industry sectors.

Between April 2016 and January 2020, 8668 consecutive ECGs were obtained and interpreted during health examinations of working in İstanbul, Turkey. ECGs were classified as major, minor anomaly, and normal according to the Minnesota code criteria. The workers with major anomaly on ECGs, recurrent syncope attacks, and family history (FH) of sudden or inexplicably death under the age of 50 and with a positive FH of cardiomyopathy were also referred to further transthoracic echocardiographic (TTE) examination.

The mean age of the workers was 30.47 ± 9.4 years, most of them were male (97.1%) and under the age of 30 (54.2%). Major ECG changes were detected in 4.6%, and minor anomalies were 28.3%. A total of 663 workers were referred to our cardiology clinic for advanced TTE examination, but only 578 (87.17% of the selected) attended the appointment. Four hundred and sixty-seven (80.7%) echocardiography examinations were within normal limits. Echocardiographic imaging revealed abnormal findings in 98 cases (25.7%) in the ECG abnormalities group, three (4.4%) in the syncope group, and 10 (7.6%) in the positive FH group (p < .001).

This work demonstrated the ECG findings and echocardiographic features of a large sample of Turkish workers from high-risk employment sectors. This is the first study conducted in Turkey on this subject.