Artificial maintenance of atrial fibrillation causes reversible electrophysiological remodeling that promotes further atrial fibrillation, establishing the foundational concept that 'AF begets AF'.
Artificial maintenance of AF leads to a marked shortening of AERP, a reversion of its physiological rate adaptation, and an increase in rate, inducibility and stability of AF. All these changes were completely reversible within 1 week of sinus rhythm.
Wijffels et al. (Sun,) studied this question.