A technique for measurement of the extent of spatial organization of atrial activation during atrial fibrillation in the intact human heart

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common clinical problem, associated with considerable morbidity and motility, for which effective management strategies have yet to be devised. The absence of objective measures to guide selection of antiarrhythmic drug therapy for maintenance of sinus rhythm leaves only clinical endpoints (either beneficial or detrimental) for assessment of drug action, with occasional catastrophic consequences. As part of an attempt to provide an objective framework for the assessment of antiarrhythmic drug action on the electrophysiologic determinants of atrial fibrillation, the authors have developed a measure of the spatial organization of atrial activation processes during atrial fibrillation. By recording activation sequences at multiple equally spaced locations on the endocardial surface of the atrial during atrial fibrillation in humans and determining the degree of correlation between these activation sequences as a function of distance, the authors have been able to construct spatial correlation functions for atrial activation. They have found that atrial activation remains well-correlated, independent of distance during normal sinus rhythm and atrial flutter. During atrial fibrillation, correlation decays monotonically with distance and the space-constant for this decay may be used to describe the relative spatial organization of atrial fibrillation. The authors provide examples of the impact of antiarrhythmic agents on the space-constant and suggest that assessment of the relative spatial organization of atrial activation using this methodology may potentially provide an objective framework to guide therapy in patients with AF.