Clinical Significance of Premature Beats

The relationship that premature beats bear to prognosis is a question that has called forth many and varied opinions. There are, on the one hand, those who have considered them to be entirely benign and, on the other hand, those who have thought them evidence, in every case, of underlying cardiac disease. Between these two extremes their clinical moment is appraised in various gradations of severity. Long before the advent of the modern methods of studying arrhythmia and the recognition of the several different types of this condition, it was recognized by some that premature beats, or pulse intermittence as they were then termed, were not always to be interpreted in a serious light. There is still so much uncertainty about the significance of premature beats under varying conditions that new information based on more than impressions is highly desirable. Such information regarding the significance of premature beats at varying