Comparison of the Prognostic Significance of the Electrocardiographic QRS/T Angles in Predicting Incident Coronary Heart Disease and Total Mortality (from the Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities Study)

Spatial QRS/T angle and spatial T-wave axis were shown to be strong independent predictors of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) and total mortality, but they are not routinely available. We evaluated whether frontal plane QRS/T angle, easily obtained as the difference between frontal plane axes of QRS and T, provides a suitable substitute for spatial QRS/T angle as a risk predictor. Our study consisted of 13,973 participants from the ARIC Study. Outcome variables were incident CHD and total mortality during a median follow-up of 14 years. Electrocardiographic variables were categorized as abnormal (≥95th percentile), borderline (≥75th and