Relationship between atrial fibrillation and P wave dispersion in inpatients with COVID-19

Abstract

Objective: Various cardiac arrhythmias, primarily atrial fibrillation (AF), have been reported to occur in 7% to 22% of patients hospitalized due to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It has been shown that P wave dispersion (PWD) predicts the development of AF in different clinical situations and is closely related to the inflammatory process. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between PWD and the development of new-onset AF in hospitalized patients due to COVID-19. Methods: 51 COVID-19 patients who developed AF and 72 COVID-19 patients who did not develop AF were included in the study as the control group retrospectively. Electrocardiography (ECG) was performed in all patients and PWD was calculated. In addition, demographic data, imaging findings and laboratory test results of all COVID-19 patients were obtained from the institutional digital database and recorded. Results: Patients who developed AF were older and had a higher frequency of hypertension and heart failure (p<0.05 for all). Patients who developed AF during hospitalization had higher neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR), C-reactive protein (CRP) (p<0.05 for all)). The PWD value was significantly longer in the AF group (p<0.05). In addition, a significant positive correlation was observed between PWD and cTn-I, CRP and NLR. Conclusion: Our study showed that PWD predicts new-onset AF during follow-up of COVID-19 patients and is associated with inflammatory markers. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that PWD is an independent predictor of AF development. We believe that pretreatment PWD assessment in COVID-19 patients may be useful in estimating the risk of AF.

Keywords

• P Wave Dispersion
• COVID-19
• Atrial Fibrillation

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