e0634 The relationship between hypokalaemia at the early stage of acute myocardial infarction and malignant ventricular arrhythmia

Objective To investigate the relationship between hypokalaemia at the early stage of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and malignant ventricular arrhythmia (MVA) as well as the features of hypokalaemia. Methods Total of 302 patients were involved in this study and conformed to the following conditions: getting AMI primarily, onset was within 24 hours, accepted serum potassium test and Holter monitoring on admission, didn't use diuretics before, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, vomiting or diarrhoea resulted from gastrointestinal diseases. Relevant data including types of AMI, namely STEMI or NSTEMI; infarct sites of STEMI; time interval from onset of AMI to admission; whether or not hypokalaemia (serum potassium≤3.5 mmol/l) and MVA were recorded. The relationships between hypokalaemia and MVA, the time interval and hypokalaemia, types of AMI and hypokalaemia, infarct sites and hypokalaemia were analysed. SPSS 13.0 was used for statistical analysis. The categorical data was processed with chi-square test and p values below 0.05 were considered significant. Results The incidence of hyokalemia for 24 patients within 3 h from onset of AMI to admission was 37.5%. The incidence of MVA between the group with and without hypokalaemia had significant difference (10.47% vs 3.36%, p<0.05). The incidence of hypokalaemia between the group within 3h and group within 3 h to 24 h of time interval from onset of AMI to admission had significant difference (37.5% vs 15.47%, p<0.05). There was no significant difference in incidence of hypokalaemia between the group of STEMI and NSTEMI (20.35% vs 12.68%, p>0.05). There was no significant difference in incidence of hypokalaemia between groups with anterior wall AMI and non-anterior wall AMI (25.88% vs 18.81%, p>0.05). Conclusion At the early stage of AMI, hypokalaemia is often present. MVA was close associated with hypokalaemia at the early stage of AMI, which indicated that hypokalaemia was a cause of death.