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

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

RT-198

Transesophageal atrial pacing with different electrodes for initiation of late potential in patients after acute myocardial infarction

Matthias Heinke, Helmut Kühnert, Frank-Michael Malur, Ralf Surber, Gundrun Dannberg, Hans-Reiner Figulla.
University Hospital of Internal Medicine III, Division of Cardiology, Jena, Germany

Introduction

The recording of ventricular late potential by means of signal averaging technique requires 1000 to 2000 signal to noise ratio between R wave amplitude and noise amplitude in the signal averaged ECG during spontaneous rhythm¹ and accelerated heart rate. Accelerated heart rate with high rate atrial stimulation provokes ventricular late potential at the end of the QRS vector in the time domain of the signal averaged ECG and during the QRS vector in the frequency domain of the signal averaged ECG with spectro temporal mapping in patients after myocardial infarction^2,3. High rate transesophageal atrial pacing allows a noninvasive recording of ventricular late potential and His potential in the time domain of the signal averaged ECG⁴. The analysis of ventricular late potential during atrial pacing is not possible with superposition of ineffective atrial stimulation impulse and ventricular late potential⁵.

To evaluate the influence of transesophageal atrial pacing with different electrodes for initiation of ventricular late potential during accelerated heart rate in patients after acute myocardial infarction, we analysed the QRS vector and the signal to noise ratio in the signal averaged ECG during spontaneous rhythm and accelerated heart rate with transesophageal atrial pacing with different electrodes.