[The management of syncope in the hospital: the OESIL Study (Osservatorio Epidemiologico della Sincope nel Lazio)]. / Gestione della sincope in ospedale: lo Studio OESIL (Osservatorio Epidemiologico della Sincope nel Lazio).

BACKGROUND: While syncope is generally considered a frequent finding in clinical practice, no clear epidemiological evidence is available about the relevance of such an event in the general population of Italy. METHODS: The OESIL Study was designed and undertaken in 15 hospitals of the Italian region of Latium in order to assess the percentage of emergency-room visits and admissions due to syncope, as well as to analyze the in-hospital diagnostic work-up performed for this condition. RESULTS: During a two-month observation period, 781 (372 males and 409 females, mean age 55.2 (22.8 years) consecutive patients came to the emergency rooms of the 15 hospitals included in the investigation due to a syncope spell (0.9% of emergency room visits); 450/781 patients (57.6%) were subsequently hospitalized (1.3% of all admissions): 48.0% of the admissions were admitted to a general medical ward, 29.3% to an observation ward, 13.3% to a cardiology section, 1.6% to a neurology section and 7.8% to other clinical sections (neurosurgery, general surgery). The mean duration of in-hospital stay was 6.9 (5.8 days; range 1-40 days). During the hospitalization period, 93.1% of patients underwent an ECG, 51.0% an EEG, 44.3% a CT scan of the central nervous system, 40.2% an echocardiogram and 19.5% a tilt-test. The syncope spell was considered to have a cardiovascular origin in 33.8% of the cases and a non-cardiovascular in 11.6% of the cases, while the origin was unknown in 54.4% of the cases. CONCLUSIONS: Collected data support the idea that syncope represents a frequent event in the general population and is responsible for a significant percentage of emergency-room visits and hospital admissions. However, the performance of conventional diagnostic work-ups is far from being satisfactory.

Assessment of left ventricular hypertrophy in patients with essential hypertension. A rational basis for the electrocardiogram.

There is a large body of evidence that the electrocardiogram (ECG) is insensitive in the recognition of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), in comparison with the echocardiogram; however, its specificity is high. In this study we further analyzed the performance of the ECG in detecting LVH in 200 consecutive patients (124 men and 76 women, mean age 50.9 years) with mild to moderate essential hypertension, using echocardiographically determined left ventricular mass (LVM) as the standard for comparison. To test the hypothesis that, owing to the high number of true positive findings, the ECG may still be useful for clinical purposes by selecting subsets of hypertensives with higher degrees of LVH, we compared the mean values of LVM index corresponding to either positive (true positive) or negative (false negative) electrocardiographic signs of LVH. In this study 69 patients (34.5%) had echocardiographic LVH, as defined by a LVM index exceeding 125 g/m2 for men and 112 g/m2 for women. Almost all criteria demonstrated high levels of specificity (> or = 89%). In the whole group the Lewis index ((RI - RIII)+(SIII - SI) > or = 17 mm) showed a slight superiority in diagnosing LVH (sensitivity = 43%) in comparison to the remaining criteria; the confidence intervals estimate of sensitivities confirmed such diagnostic superiority only with respect to those criteria with a sensitivity < or = 17%. However, the use of McNemar's test to compare sensitivities of all electrocardiographic criteria at matched specificities (> or = 95%) did not show significant differences (P < .05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)