Diagnostic reliability of monitoring for premature atrial and ventricular complexes

Short-term ambulatory electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring is often used to assess premature atrial complex (PAC) and premature ventricular complex (PVC) frequency, but the diagnostic reliability is unknown. The objective of this study was to study the day-to-day variability of PAC and PVC frequency.

We used 14-day full-disclosure mobile cardiac telemetry recordings without atrial fibrillation in 8245 US patients aged 17–103 years to calculate the diagnostic reliability of shorter ambulatory ECG recordings compared with 14-day averages. Over 14 days, 1853 patients had ≥500 PACs/day, 410 patients had ≥5000 PACs/day, and 197 patients had ≥10 000 PACs/day; 1640 patients had ≥500 PVCs/day, 354 patients had ≥5000 PVCs/day, and 175 patients had ≥10 000 PVCs/day. After 3 days, the estimated daily PAC frequency differed by ≥50% from the 14-day mean in 25% of patients; for PVCs, the corresponding duration was 7 days. Ten days of monitoring were needed to estimate PAC and PVC frequency within ±20% of the overall 14-day frequency in 80% of patients. For daily PAC and PVC frequencies ≥10 000, single-day estimation had a specificity of 99.3% [95% confidence interval (CI) 99.1–99.5] at a sensitivity of 76.6 (95% CI 70.1–80.4%) for PACs and a 99.6% (95% CI 99.4–99.7%) specificity at 79.4 (95% CI 72.7–85.2) sensitivity for PVCs. After 7 days, the sensitivity increased to 88.8% (95% CI 83.6–92.9) for PACs and 86.9% (95% CI 80.9–91.5%) for PVCs.

While there is substantial daily variability across most PAC and PVC levels, findings of ≥10 000 PACs or PVCs are highly specific and do not need to be confirmed with longer recordings.