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on November 1, 2004

Circulation. 2004
Published online before print November 1, 2004, doi: 10.1161/01.CIR.0000147781.02738.13
A more recent version of this article appeared on November 23, 2004
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Submitted on April 23, 2004
Revised on July 8, 2004
Accepted on July 23, 2004

Epicardial Mapping of Chronic Atrial Fibrillation in Patients. Preliminary Observations

Jayakumar Sahadevan MD, Kyungmoo Ryu MS, Leora Peltz PhD, Celeen M. Khrestian BS, Robert W. Stewart MD, Alan H. Markowitz MD, and Albert L. Waldo MD*

From the Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland, The Louis B. Stokes Veterans’ Administration Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: alw2{at}po.cwru.edu.

Background--The mechanisms of chronic atrial fibrillation (AF) are not well understood. We performed epicardial mapping of chronic AF in patients undergoing open heart surgery to test the hypothesis that chronic AF is due to a left atrial "driver" with a regular, short cycle length, resulting in fibrillatory conduction to the rest of the atria.

Methods and Results--Nine patients with chronic AF (1 month to >15 years’ duration) were studied at open heart surgery, 8 before and 1 during cardiopulmonary bypass. During AF, atrial electrograms (AEGs) were recorded for 1 to 5 minutes from 404 epicardial electrodes arranged in bipoles along with ECG lead II or ventricular electrogram. Four-second segments of each bipolar AEG were also subjected to fast Fourier transform analysis. Two patterns of atrial activation were present during AF. In pattern 1 (7/9 patients), AEGs from parts of the atria demonstrated a short, regular cycle length with identical beat-to-beat morphology, and the rest of the atria were activated irregularly, and AEGs that demonstrated constant morphology and cycle length were localized to parts of the left atria (5/7), the right atria (1/7), or both atria (1/7). In pattern 2 (2/9 patients), AEGs showed no evidence of regular activation or constant morphology.

Conclusions--In 9 patients with chronic AF, the commonest recorded AEG pattern showed an area of regular, rapid rhythm, consistent with the possibility that a driver causing fibrillatory conduction is one mechanism of AF in these patients.


Key words: fibrillation • atrium • Fourier analysis • mapping • surgery


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