Electrocardiographic body surface mapping in patients with ventricular tachycardia. Assessment of utility in the identification of effective pharmacological therapy.

BACKGROUND: Body surface maps of net QRST deflection areas (isointegrals) reflect regional ventricular repolarization properties. Vulnerability to ventricular tachyarrhythmias is associated with maps that feature multiple islands (extrema) of positive and negative values; such maps reflect regional disparity of ventricular recovery properties. The value of body surface mapping in prediction of the efficacy of antiarrhythmic therapy for ventricular tachyarrhythmias has not been determined. METHODS AND RESULTS: Isointegral ECG body surface mapping was performed in 51 patients with inducible ventricular tachycardia having programmed stimulation studies at baseline and after oral quinidine therapy. The degree of nondipolarity of QRST isointegral distribution was expressed by the number of extrema and by the percentage contribution of nondipolar eigenvectors after Karhunen-Loeve transformation. QRST isointegral nondipolarity was greater in ventricular tachycardia patients than in 51 age- and sex-matched normal subjects expressed as mean number of extrema (4.1 +/- 2.8 versus 2.0 +/- 0.2, respectively), mean eigenvector-determined nondipolar content percentages (12.4 +/- 10.1% versus 4.5 +/- 4.9%), prevalence of abnormal numbers of extrema (63% versus 4%), or prevalence of abnormal nondipolar content percentages (33% versus 4%) (each p less than 0.01). Quinidine prevented ventricular tachycardia induction in 14 patients. Patients for whom quinidine was or was not effective had similar nondipolarity indexes at baseline. However, maps on quinidine differed as a function of antiarrhythmic efficacy. Although effective therapy produced no significant mean changes in nondipolarity, ineffective therapy increased the number of extrema compared with baseline (5.4 +/- 3.4 versus 3.8 +/- 2.5, respectively) (p = 0.002). Individually, 43% of patients on effective therapy had drug-induced decreases in numbers of extrema compared with 14% of those on ineffective therapy (p = 0.02). Furthermore, 29% of patients on effective therapy showed drug-induced increases in numbers of extrema compared with 62% of those on ineffective therapy (p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: QRST isointegral body surface mapping shows promise as a noninvasive measure of drug efficacy in patients with ventricular tachycardia.