Dispersion of cardiac action potential duration and the initiation of re-entry: a computational study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The initiation of re-entrant cardiac arrhythmias is associated with increased dispersion of repolarisation, but the details are difficult to investigate either experimentally or clinically. We used a computational model of cardiac tissue to study systematically the association between action potential duration (APD) dispersion and susceptibility to re-entry.

Methods

We simulated a 60 x 60 mm2 D sheet of cardiac ventricular tissue using the Luo-Rudy phase 1 model, with maximal conductance of the K+ channel gKmax set to 0.004 mS mm(-2). Within the central 40 x 40 mm region we introduced square regions with prolonged APD by reducing gKmax to between 0.001 and 0.003 mS mm(-2). We varied (i) the spatial scale of these regions, (ii) the magnitude of gKmax in these regio

SUBMITTER: Clayton RH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC550675 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature