ECG tests may predict heart attacks in adults aged over 70

A test to measure the heart’s electrical activity could help predict future heart attacks in otherwise healthy adults over 70, a US study said.

The findings help answer the question of whether or not ECGs can be used to detect heart disease earlier in patients who don’t have chest pain or other symptoms

Researchers followed 2,192 healthy adults aged 70-79 for a period of eight years, accord-ing to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The subjects started the study by getting an electrocardiogram, often called an ECG, which measures the heart’s overall health.

People who showed abnormalities in their ECGs saw a higher risk of heart disease over the course of the study than people whose ECGs were normal, even after researchers adjusted for risk factors like diabetes and high cholesterol.

Those who had minor abnormalities show up on their first test had a 35 per cent higher risk of heart attack, while those with major abnormalities had a 51 per cent increased risk, said the findings.

“This research is taking the information from an ECG and adding it to other traditional risk factors to better predict who is going to have a heart attack,” said co-author Douglas Bauer, director of the University of California San Francisco Division of General Internal Medicine Research Programme.

However, organisations such as the American Academy of Family Physicians do not back routine use of ECGs for cardiac screening in low-risk patients, citing high costs and a lack of evidence that the test would improve health outcomes.

“For the time being, in the absence of clear evidence of benefit and no clear implications for costs, the best advice is not to perform ECGs in asymptomatic patients, regardless of age,” said an accompanying editorial by Philip Greenland of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

“However, a careful and detailed cost-effectiveness analysis would be a useful next step in the translation of the cumulative risk infor-mation into an evidence-based practice recommendation.”