European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Background: The ECG remains the most immediately accessible and widely used diagnostic tool for guiding emergent treatment strategies. Coronary angiography is a widely used invasive examination which is considered the reference standard for assessing presence of stenosis in the coronary arteries. Objectives: To correlate findings of ECG and Coronary Angiography in identifying culprit artery among patients with acute ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction. Methods and Material: The study was undertaken among 100 Patients aged 18years and above presenting with symptoms suggestive of Acute Myocardial Infarction as a diagnostic accuracy study. Convenient sampling technique was used to include patients in the study. Results: Most of the study participants were in the age group of 46-60 years (44%) and males (75.0%). Hypertension (44%), Obesity (28%) and Diabetes (26%) were found to be the three most common comorbidities among the study participants. Chest pain (71%), profuse sweating (57%) and chest discomfort (44%) were the most common complaints. The mean duration of symptoms among all the patients was 75.65±45.0 mins. The sensitivity and specificity of ECG  in detecting LAD involvement is 71.8% and 72% respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of ECG in detecting RCA involvement is 71% and 94.2% respectively. Conclusion: ECG was found to have good accuracy in predicting the culprit artery involved in patient with ST elevation MI. The sensitivity of ECG was good in predicting all the three main arteries and an even higher specificity was noted in case of RCA