Journal of the American College of Cardiology
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- Published online July 2, 2013.
Author Information
- Su-Hua Wu, MD, PhD∗ (wusuhua{at}hotmail.com),
- Xiao-Xiong Lin, MD,
- Yun-Jiu Cheng, MD,
- Can-Can Qiang, MD and
- Jing Zhang, MD
- ↵∗Department of Cardiology, First Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, No. 58 Zhongshan Road II, Guangzhou 510080, China
We read the letter from Dr. Hayashi and colleagues and checked our data carefully (1). We found an error in the “total” columns. The “total” columns in our paper are subjects with and without ERP, not person-years. However, the overall estimated effect did not change when we re-estimated the overall effect for “death from cardiac cause” using person-years instead of subjects. According to our re-estimated effect, we also did not overestimate the results of “death from cardiac cause” in our meta-analysis. We are sorry for the error.
We did not overestimate the risk ratios for arrhythmic death. The study population in the paper by Olson et al. (2) came from the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study, and sudden cardiac death means arrhythmia-related death Unexplained death in the paper by Haruta et al. (3) included unexplained accidental death and sudden death, generally meaning arrhythmia-related death.
Early repolarization pattern (ERP) was characterized by an elevation ≥0.1 mV of the QRS-ST junction (J point) in the inferior and/or lateral leads on 12-lead electrocardiography. Also, we limited ERP to either QRS notching or slurring in our meta-analysis, which was different from the QRS morphology of Brugada syndrome. So, we did not overestimate the risk ratios for arrhythmic death owing to including some patients with Brugada syndrome.
- American College of Cardiology Foundation
References
- ↵
- Wu S.H.,
- Lin X.X.,
- Cheng Y.J.,
- Qiang C.C.,
- Zhang J.
- ↵
- ↵
- Haruta D.,
- Matsuo K.,
- Tsuneto A.,
- et al.