does accompanying arrhythmia have any clinical significance?]
Clinical significance of cardiac arrhythmias in patients with advanced and stable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease was assessed 22-24 hour Holter monitoring revealed supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias in all 65 patients. There was a great variation of arrhythmia quality and quantity in the study group. Among others, 1808 complex ventricular extrasystoles in 33 patients and 302 episodes of nonsustained ventricular tachycardia in 19 patients were recorded. No sustained symptomatic ventricular arrhythmias were observed. We found no correlation between the intensity of ventricular and supraventricular extrasystoles and clinical parameters as assessed by echocardiography, spirometry and gasometry. However, patients with complex ventricular arrhythmias had larger right ventricular diameter in echocardiography. Of 65 studied patients, 14 (21%) died during follow-up ranging from 1 month to 3.2 years, mean 12.2 months. Two outpatients died suddenly. These 14 patients had larger r
