What is the relation between vagal activity and auricular fibrillation in various clinical conditions?
Vagal activity is recognized as a contributing factor to the occurrence of auricular fibrillation based on animal studies, though its clinical origin remains poorly understood.
AURICULAR fibrillation is frequent in various forms of heart disease and in thyrotoxicosis, and its occurrence in other conditions is also recognized.1 Although this arrhythmia is often encountered in clinical practice, its origin is not understood by most clinicians, in spite of the fact that it has been the subject of considerable fruitful study.The available reports of studies in animals in which auricular fibrillation was regularly produced definitely establish the fact that vagal activity is one of the factors responsible for its occurrence.2 The earlier studies on animals were not entirely satisfactory from a clinical point of view, since . . .
Mark D. Altschule (1945) studied this question.