The goal of the study was to estimate a possible clinical usefulness of body surface mapping in early detecting cardiac involvement in the patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc). The study population, consisting of 23 patients, 16 women and 7 men, with the mean age of 37.8+-21.6 years, with define diagnosis of SSc, underwent the body surface potential mapping (BSPM) examinations with the 87-lead Fukuda Denshi system. The group-mean potential extremes values of the isointegral QRST maps appeared to be significantly greater in the 95% of the examined patients than in the control maps. 25% of the SSc patients with cardiac symptoms and signs revealed the multipolar content of the maps, which suggests a substrate for malignant arrhythmias. Echocardiography found some abnormalities in 21.7% and 24-hour Holter ECG in 39% of the SSc patients. Of these patients, 40% manifested no cardiac complaints. BSPM could be a supplementary method for detecting "silent" cardiac involvement in course of systemic sclerosis.
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