Development of electrocardiographic sex differences during puberty
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Citation | |
| Description | This chapter summarizes knowledge about the sex differences of electrocardiogram (ECG) in children and adolescents. The most important part is cardiac repolarization expressed as QT interval on surface QCG. It is well known, that QT interval duration is the same in both sexes in preadolescent children. The QT interval changes during adolescence and finally is longer in females. Until recently only resting QT interval was analysed in few studies in childhood. In this chapter we are presenting investigation of children and adolescents using continuous ECG recordings during postural provocation to obtain individual-specific QT/RR profiles over broad heart rate ranges. We observed QTc prolongation of 0,7 ms per year in females on the contrary to shortening of 0,64 s per year in males. The analyses suggest that hormonal changes are likely causing QTc shortening in adolescent males but are unlikely the principal cause of QTc prolongation in females |