Why the study?
Does signal averaging of highly amplified high right atrium recordings detect low voltage electrical activity preceding atrial depolarisation in humans?
Does signal averaging of highly amplified high right atrium recordings detect low voltage electrical activity preceding atrial depolarisation in humans?
Signal averaging of highly amplified intracardiac recordings can detect early low voltage activity preceding atrial depolarization, which may represent sinus node activity.
May enable pre-atrial signal detection in humans; hypothesis-generating for sinus node activity and requires prospective validation.
Electrical recordings were made in the high right atrium in 28 patients undergoing cardiac catheterisation and in 3 healthy volunteers. After filtering and amplification by 3 to 10 million times, the signals were passed through a signal averaging process in a digital computer. Of the 28 subjects who had technically satisfactory recordings, 23 showed low voltage electrical activity preceding the conventionally-recorded atrial depolarisation. The low voltage activity started 50 to 200 ms before the atrial deflection and was variable in shape. These early signals may be the result of activity in the region of the sinus node.
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Mackintosh et al. (1979) studied this question.
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