Assessment of cardiac functional and anatomical alterations in brucellosis

Assessment of Cardiac Functional and Anatomical Alterations in Brucellosis İbrahim İLHAN, MD. Department of Cardiology Expertise Thesis Brucellosis is a zoonotic infection disease with high morbidity and low mortality. Route of transmission of this endemic disease in our country is unboiled milk and milk products consumption. The disease shows different clinical symptoms. Between 1991 and 2000, about 9,000 cases yearly were reported to the Turkish Ministry of Health (incidence: 14/100,000). Cardiac involvement in brucellosis is rare, occurring at a rate of 0% to 2% in large series. The most usual complication is endocarditis in-volving a healthy native valve, generally the aortic valve. One possible complication of endocarditis is myocardial or pericardial involvement, although its isolated presentation is exceptional. Diagnosis generally made by positive result of standard aglutination test (STA?160) in terms of presence of clinical symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate cardiac involvement in 32 patients with the diagnosis of brucellosis. Clinical and laboratory parameters of all subjects were assessed and Standard 12-lead electrocardiographs (ECG), 24-hour electrocardiographic Holter monitoring and 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABMP) were performed, All the patients and control group were evaluated by M-mod, two-dimensional conventional Doppler echocardiography and tissue Doppler imaging. 32 patients with brucellosis and age-matched 28 healthy subjects as control group were enrolled to this study. 18 of 32 brucellosis patients (%56.25) were male in the trial. The mean ages of the patients and control group were 22.04 ± 12.51 years and 27.05 ± 13,17 years respectively; and mean body mass index (BMI) were calculated as 23.21 ± 2.31 ve 24.38 ± 2.48 . There was no sitatistical differences in between study groups compared for age, gender and BMI (p>0.05). Duration of the QT dispersion that known to cause serious ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death through the mechanism of reentry were significantly longer at the brucellosis group than the control group (p<0.05). İn the long term increased risk of developing arrhythmias in these patients should be considered. However, this issue needs prospective studies contains larger patient populations, with longer follow-up period. Key words: Brucellosis, Cardiovascular system involvement, Qt dispersion.