Role of infarct scar dimensions, border zone repolarization properties and anisotropy in the origin and maintenance of cardiac reentry.

Role of infarct scar dimensions, border zone repolarization properties and anisotropy in the origin and maintenance of cardiac reentry. Math Biosci. 2019 Jul 17;:108228 Authors: Colli Franzone P, Gionti V, Pavarino LF, Scacchi S, Storti C Abstract Cardiac ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a life-threatening arrhythmia consisting of a well organized structure of reentrant electrical excitation pathways. Understanding the generation and maintenance of the reentrant mechanisms, which lead to the onset of VT induced by premature beats in presence of infarct scar, is one of the most important issues in current electrocardiology. We investigate, by means of numerical simulations, the role of infarct scar dimension, repolarization properties and anisotropic fiber structure of scar tissue border zone (BZ) in the genesis of VT. The simulations are based on the Bidomain model, a reaction-diffusion system of Partial Differential Equations, discretized by finite elements in space and implicit-explicit finite differences in time. The computational domain adopted is an idealized left ventricle affected by an infarct scar extending transmurally. We consider two different scenarios: i) the scar region extends along the entire transmural wall thickness, from endocardium to epicardium, with the exception of a BZ region shaped as a central sub-epicardial channel (CBZ); ii) the scar region extends transmurally along the ventricular wall, from endocardium ...
Source: Mathematical Biosciences - Category: Statistics Authors: Tags: Math Biosci Source Type: research