One Million Electrocardiograms of Primary Care Patients: A Descriptive Analysis

In 722 cities of Minas Gerais (Brazil), primary care patients can have their ECGs remotely interpreted by cardiologists of the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais (TNMG), a public telehealth service. As of December 2014, more than 1.9 million ECGs were interpreted. This study analyzed the database of all ECGs performed by the TNMG on primary care patients from 2009 to 2013 (n=1,101,993). Structured patient data and the results of automated ECG interpretation by the Glasgow Program are described. Mean patient age is 51 years old, 59% of them are women. The average body mass index is 25.9 kg/m2, with an average increase of 0.15 kg/m2 per civil year. Those patients notably have hypertension (33.2%), family history of coronary artery disease (14.5%), smoking (6.9%), diabetes (5.8%), obesity (5.8%) or Chagas Disease (3.0%). Seventy percent of ECGs are normal. This percentage is higher in women (72.3%) and decreases in average by 7.4 every 10 years of life. There are notably 12% of possible myocardial infarction, 10% of possible left ventricular hypertrophy and 8% of possible supraventricular extra systole.