14th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 2000

Jan. 29 - Feb. 5, 2000
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-191

Electrical remodeling in humans

Claudio Pandozi, Filippo Lamberti, Antonio Castro, Leonardo Calo, Massimo Santini.
Division of Cardiology, San Filippo Neri Hospital, Rome, Italy

Atrial fibrillation (AF) represents the most common arrhythmia (A) with an incidence in the adult population ranging from 0.4 to 0.9%. This incidence increases with the age resulting about 0.1 to 0.2% per year in the 40s up to 2-4% over the 60s¹.

AF has a tendency to become more persistent over the time. In fact paroxysmal AF often progress to chronic AF and the transition rate is related to the underlying etiology. However this happens in up to 18% of patients without heart disease². Moreover the transition from paroxysmal to chronic AF is related to the duration of the paroxysms, occurring more frequently with longer paroxysms. Also the pharmacological or electrical cardioversion of the A is influenced by the duration of the arrhythmia; in the same way the maintenance of stable sinus rhythm is also related to the duration of the A. These epidemiological data and the clinical experience itself suggest that apart from the progressive changes due to an underlying heart disease, AF itself causes progressive electrophysiological and probably structural changes of the atria which progressively promote the initiation and the perpetuation of AF.

Key Words