Investigation of the effect of inflammation on the development of QT dispersion in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and heart failure

Heart failure is a major cause of mortality and leads to a decrease in the quality of life of affected patients. In addition, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome is another condition that is intertwined with heart failure and nowadays also affects the social life of patients. Both entities harbor complementary risk factors. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify the common factors affecting the prognosis in both patient groups and to detect them early. Perhaps one of the most important factors is QT dispersion, which may predict ventricular arrhythmias that may lead to sudden cardiac death. The study included 160 patients with a history of heart failure who were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome by polysomnography in the sleep laboratory of Trakya University Faculty of Medicine. Apnea/hypopnea index values were also recorded to assess the severity of sleep apnea and systemic immune-inflammatory indices were calculated using hemogram parameters. These data and other demographic, laboratory, transthoracic echocardiographic and cardiovascular disease data were statistically compared with QT dispersion. As a result of these comparisons, although SII and apnea/hypopnea index were statistically significant in terms of increasing QT dispersion in different analyses, SII was significantly higher in the group with apnea/hypopnea index >15 (p: 0.029). In addition to its relationship with the apnea/hypopnea index, SII may be seen as an easily calculable hemogram parameter that can predict ventricular arrhythmias in preventing sudden cardiac death, mainly due to its effect on QT dispersion, and may affect the prognosis in heart failure and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome.