This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Vasilios Papademetriou, MD
Department of Veterans Affairs Washington, DC

JAMA. 1992;268(1):52-53.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.

—It was interesting to read the article by Siegel et al in the February 26 issue of THE JOURNAL.¹ We have repeatedly shown that diuretic-induced hypokalemia does not in fact cause arrhythmias in patients with uncomplicated mild to moderate hypertension.

I was pleased and reassured that their data in a large population confirmed our observations. In the last 9 years, we have performed studies in hypertensive patients with or without left ventricular hypertrophy and in patients² with mild³ and moderate or severe left ventricular hypertrophy.⁴ We assessed the effect of exercise⁵ on ventricular arrhythmias in diuretic-treated patients and the effect of potassium correction in seriously hypokalemic patients.⁶ These studies included over 130 patients and yet we found no evidence that hypokalemia aggravates ventricular arrhythmias. In that respect we are in agreement with Siegel et al. However, we differ on their finding . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?