Gender Related Modification in ECG and VCG in Elderly People

Objective: Objective of the current study is to investigate the effect of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes mellitus on modifications in electrocardiographic (ECG) and vectorcardiographic (VCG) features, considering an elderly population, most of them with multiple comorbidities. Materials. Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging (ILSA-CNR) database was created to evaluate physiologic and pathologic modifications connected with aging. Standard 12-leads ECG recordings (10 sec, 500 Hz) were taken with a follow-up of three years. The study examined 1109 males and 918 females aged 65-84 years. All considered parameters were 21: 10 from ECG signal, 10 from VCG signal and Heart Rate (HR). Results and Discussion. Groups with different heart diseases (Diabetes, Angina, Hypertension, Myocardial Infarction and Arrhythmia) are compared to the Healthy group. Only five parameters (T-wave area dispersion, T-ratio, T-roundness, T-PCA and T amplitude) all related to T-wave, presented statistically significant differences both for males and females between Healthy and heart diseases group. For QRS related parameters there is different behavior between males and females. Myocardial Infarction, Arrhythmia, and Heart Failure are the diseases with greatest impact on the ECG and VCG parameters.