- Home>
- Specialties>
- General Medicine>
- Summary and Comment
An Association Between Prolonged QT Interval and SIDS.
Previous work has suggested that a prolonged QT interval on the electrocardiogram may be associated with sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). These Italian investigators performed ECGs on the third or fourth day after birth in 34,442 healthy infants born between 1976 and 1994, and correlated the ECG findings with causes of death during one year of follow-up.
The authors defined the upper-normal limit of the corrected QT (QTc) as 440 msec, which was at the 97.5th percentile for their study population (i.e., two standard deviations above the mean). During the follow-up year, 24 of the 34 deaths were classified as SIDS. Twelve of the 24 (50 percent) had a QTc above 440 msec, as compared with none of the 10 children who died of other causes and 2.5 percent of the overall population, by definition). The absolute risk for SIDS was 1.53 percent among infants with a prolonged QTc and 0.037 percent among those with a normal QTc (odds ratio, 41.3).
Comment: These data strongly suggest that the cardiac electrical instability reflected by a prolonged QTc interval may predispose to some cases of SIDS. Still, a vast majority of infants with prolonged QTc do not die from SIDS. Thus, editorialists note that it would be premature to recommend routine ECG screening of all newborns.
— AS Brett
Published in Journal Watch General Medicine June 16, 1998
Citation(s):
Schwartz PJ et al. Prolongation of the QT interval and the sudden infant death syndrome. N Engl J Med 1998 Jun 11 338 1709-1714.
- Original article (Subscription may be required)
- Medline abstract (Free)
Towbin JA and Friedman RA. Prolongation of the QT interval and the sudden infant death syndrome. N Engl J Med 1998 Jun 11 338 1760-1761.
- Original article (Subscription may be required)
- Medline abstract (Free)