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Long-Term Follow-up of Changes in Fibrillation Waves in Patients With Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Spectral Analysis of Surface ECG

2006; Japanese Circulation Society; Volume: 70; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1253/circj.70.169

1347-4820

Takeshi Sasaki, Shinichi Niwano, Sae Sasaki, Ryuta Imaki, Masaru Yuge, Shoji Hirasawa, Daisuke Satoh, Masahiko Moriguchi, Akira Fujiki, Tohru Izumi,

ECG Monitoring and Analysis

Little is known about the shortening of atrial refractoriness as a result of electrical remodeling in atrial fibrillation (AF) in clinical cases, especially in terms of long-term follow-up, because of a lack of noninvasive testing methods.The present study population comprised 38 consecutive patients with persistent AF (PAF, >1 month). Before and after the follow-up period of 1-14 months, surface ECGs were recorded for analysis. In each case, the fibrillation wave was purified by subtracting the QRS-T complex template and then power spectral analysis was performed. The mean fibrillation cycle length (FCL) and FCL coefficient of variation (FCL-CV) were determined from peak power frequency in 20 epochs in each recording. The change in FCL (FCL) was calculated by subtracting the baseline FCL from the FCL after the follow-up period. To correct for the difference in the follow-up period, DeltaFCL was divided by the follow-up period in each case. In 38 cases, mean FCL decreased from 160+/-20 ms to 151+/-19 ms (p<0.05), and the FCL-CV also decreased from 15+/-9% to 12+/-5% (p<0.05). The corrected DeltaFCL was -2.4+/-7.6 (ms/month) and there was a significant negative correlation between corrected DeltaFCL and baseline FCL (p<0.01).Shortening of the FCL during a relatively long-term follow-up period was observed in patients with PAF.