Very-Low-Calorie Diets and Electrocardiographic Changes

Excerpt

To the editor: As pointed out in the editorial by MOSS (1), life-threatening arrhythmias have been implicated in the death of several morbidly obese patients on a liquid protein diet for rapid weight loss. Those arrhythmias were associated with QT interval prolongation and low QRS voltage (2).

To further elucidate the frequency of these changes, we prospectively studied 12-lead electrocardiograms of 22 markedly obese patients (50% to 99% over their ideal body weight) maintained on a supplemented fasting program for an average of 8.5 months (range, 4 to 14 months). The supplement consisted of pasteurized egg white, 300 to 450