ECG Changes of Patients with and without Conversion Disorder

Background: Conversion disorder (CD), typically linked to diverse psychological conflicts, often manifests as autonomic imbalance.The current study further examines changes in ECG parameters of conversion patients attending emergency departments after stabilization and compares it with healthy individuals.Methods: Eighty conversion patients and 80 healthy individuals participated in this cross-sectional investigation.A "12-lead ECG" has been performed on each subject.For CD patients, it is only done after the stabilization of their symptoms.For controls, ECG was collected from individuals who had done ECG as a routine health checkup.Frontal QRS-T angle and the P-wave dispersion (PWD), QT wave dispersion (QTWd), QT corrected (QTc), and QTc dispersion (QTcd) were computed.Results: The ECG between CD patients and controls were compared.The group with CD had noticeably greater anxiety levels than the control group.(Beck anxiety inventory-12 5 vs 6 5, p < 0.001), high heart rate (90 29 vs 83 20.5, p = 0.04), PWD (53.2 26.8 vs 40 12, p < 0.001), QTWd (80 40 vs 40 20, p < 0.001), QTc (421.6 86 vs 416 45, p = 0.03), QTcd (92.4 57.2 vs 45.2 9.75, p < 0.01), frontal QRS-T angle (23.73 11.22 vs 19.9 12.85, p = 0.001).Level of anxiety is strongly associated with PWD (r = 0.89 in Spearman correlation), QTwd (r = 0.45) and QTcd (r = 0.49).Depression substantially corresponds with QTc (r = 0.24) and PWD (r = 0.46). Conclusion:Our study has uncovered a significant association between CD and changes in ECG readings.