Objective
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common complication after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) with an incidence that ranges between 10 and 40%. Postoperative atrial fibrillasyon (POAF) is associated with mortality besides the incidence of stroke and the duration of hospitalization, and places substantial financial and clinical burdens on clinicians and patients. Interatrial conduction abnormalities might result in initiation and continuation of AF. Among the noninvasive and invasive methods to evaluate the interatrial conduction, the basic and the most frequently used one is the electrocardiographic P wave duration and morphology. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between intra- and interatrial conduction times measured by tissue Dopper echocardiography and the development of AF after CABG.
Methods
The study group consisted of 77 consecutive patients (55 males and 22 females with mean age 60,4 ± 12 years) who CABG was recommended after coronary angiography. All patients were monitored continuously by telemetry or 12-lead electrocardiography and defined as AF when it continued for more than 5 min. The LV-pulsed tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) was performed in the apical four-chamber view using a 5-mm pulsed Doppler sample volume with as minimum optimal gain as possible to obtain the best signal to noise ratio. Statistical analysis was performed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). A p value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
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