Does rapid ventricular stretch elicit premature ventricular excitations more easily than gradual stretch in a whole-heart model?
Rapid ventricular stretch more easily elicits premature ventricular excitations, supporting the role of stretch-activated channels in arrhythmias during dynamic ventricular loading.
Membrane depolarization is caused by both gradual and rapid ventricular stretch, but PVEs are more easily elicited by rapid stretch. Regions of greater myocardial compliance that experience greater relative stretch may act as "foci" for stretch-activated arrhythmias during dynamic ventricular loading. These whole-heart data corroborate the existence of stretch-activated membrane channels in ventricular myocardium and may help explain ventricular ectopy under conditions of differential ventricular loading, as in ventricular dyskinesia, or regional muscle traction, as in mitral valve prolapse syndrome.
Franz et al. (Tue,) studied this question.