Arrhythmias Associated with Acute Respiratory Failure in Patients with Chronic Airway Obstruction

¹ Department of Medicine, University of Colorado Medical Center, Denver

Electrocardiograms of 70 patients with chronic airway obstruction were examined from 148 consecutive admissions for acute respiratory failure. Forty-seven percent of the patients had major supraventrucular or ventrucular arrhythmias. These arrhythmias were documented on 36 percent of hospital admissions. Supraventrucular arrhythmias were slightly more common than ventrucular arrhythmias, the most frequent being atrial tachycardia and multifocal atrial tachycardia. Supraventrucular arrhythmias tended to recur. Ventrucular arrhythmias were often preceded by premature ventrucular contractions, supraventucular arrhythmias, or other ventrucular arrhythmias. Ventricular arrhythmias were assocaited with a poor prognosis; 70 percent of patients with ventrucular arrhythmia died during the hospital admission and none survived to the end of the study period. These data suggest that continuous electrocardiographic monitoring of chronic airway obstruction patients with acute respiratory failure would be of value in predicting prognosis and idenfifying patients likely to develop serious arrhythmias; these findings may have therapeutic implications.

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