Why the study?
Because pulmonary vein isolation in the left atrium is standard treatment for AF, the role of the right atrium is rarely considered.
Does the inclusion of the right atrium impact arrhythmia vulnerability in in silico models of atrial fibrillation?
Does the inclusion of the right atrium impact arrhythmia vulnerability in in silico models of atrial fibrillation?
In silico modeling demonstrates that the right atrium significantly increases arrhythmia vulnerability, suggesting it should be considered in AF treatment strategies.
Bi-atrial in silico models increase AF inducibility; leaves open whether right atrium inclusion should inform clinical ablation strategies.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most common cardiac diseases. However, a complete understanding of how to treat patients suffering from AF is still not achieved. As the isolation of the pulmonary veins in the left atrium (LA) is the standard treatment for AF, the role of the right atrium (RA) in AF is rarely considered. We investigated the impact of including the RA on arrhythmia vulnerability in silico. We generated a dataset of five mono-atrial (LA) and five bi-atrial models with three different electrophysiological (EP) setups each, regarding different states of AF-induced remodelling. For every model, a pacing protocol was run to induce reentries from a set of stimulation points. The average share of inducing points across all EP setups was 0.0, 0.8 and 6.7% for the mono-atrial scenario, 0.5, 27.3 and 37.9% for the biatrial scenario. The increase in inducibility of LA stimulation points from mono- to bi-atrial scenario was 0.91 ± 2.03%, 34.55 ± 14.9% and 44.2 ± 14.9 %, respectively. In this study, the RA had a marked impact on the results of the vulnerability assessment that needs to be further investigated.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Fitzen et al. (2023) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: