Obstructive sleep apnea and acute myocardial infarction: clinical implications of the association

It is not known whether patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) with coexistent obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) have a poor clinical course during the acute phase of MI. Therefore, we investigated the impact of OSA on in-hospital morbidity and mortality during an acute MI. Patients admitted to the intensive cardiac unit (ICU) with acute MI underwent Holter monitoring and night pulse oximetry (SpO2). During the first complete day at the ICU, both recordings (ECG and SpO2) were matched in time to determine association between cardiac arrhythmias and hypoxemia episodes. We identified and compared 55 heavy snorers with daytime sleepiness who showed more than 10 episodes of desaturation per hour on pulse oximetry (OSA group), and 196 nonOSA patients. There was an increase in the incidence of premature ventricular contraction (PVC, p < 0.05) and couplets PVC (p < 0.05) in OSA patients; the proportion of those arrhythmias increased in parallel with desaturation episodes in the OSA group. There were no differences between OSA and nonOSA groups for major MI complications (38.2% vs 34.2%, p > 0.05), ICU/hospital stay (3.6 +/- 1.2 vs 2.7 +/- 0.9 days, p > 0.05), or mortality within 30 days (14.5% vs 12.2%, p > 0.05). In conclusion, despite the greater incidence of some types of cardiac arrhythmias during an acute MI in OSA, these patients have the same clinical course in hospital and mortality rate as nonOSA patients.