Abnormalities of early depolarization in patients with remote anterior myocardial infarction and ventricular septal hypoperfusion. Diagnosis of septal MI by BSM.

The authors conducted this study to find the difference in body surface isopotential maps in 46 patients with previous anterior infarction with and without septal involvement. Thallium-201 myocardial-perfusion imaging identified 25 patients with septal infarction (group P) and 21 without (group N). In contrast to group N, group P had a prominent minimum on the anterior chest during the early phases of the QRS. According to the results obtained, the following criteria for identifying patients with septal infarction (group P) were proposed (1). Criterion 1: The absolute value of the voltage of the minimum is equal to or greater than that of the maximum at 5 ms after the onset of the QRS; (2) Criterion 2: During the early portion of the QRS the voltage of the minimum reaches -0.10 mV at the same time or earlier than the maximum reaches 0.10 mV. Both criteria had higher sensitivities (100% and 100%), specificities (71.4% and 90.5%), and predictive accuracies (87.0% and 95.7%) than either Franklead vectorcardiograms or standard 12-lead electrocardiograms in the study population. Thus, body surface isopotential mapping is considered to be useful for the diagnosis of septal involvement in patients with previous anterior myocardial infarction.