Sinus Rhythm Activation Signature Indicates Reentrant Ventricular Tachycardia Inducibility and Approximate Isthmus Location

Background Sinus rhythm activation time is useful to assess infarct border zone substrate. Objective To further investigate sinus activation in ventricular tachycardia (VT). Methods Canine postinfarction data was analyzed retrospectively. In each experiment, an infarct was created in the left ventricular wall by LAD coronary artery ligation. Three-to-five days following ligation, 196-312 bipolar electrograms were recorded from the anterior left ventricular epicardium overlapping the infarct border zone. Sustained monomorphic VT was induced via premature electrical stimulation in 50 experiments and was non-inducible in 43 experiments. Acquired sinus rhythm and VT electrograms were marked for electrical activation time, and activation maps of representative sinus rhythm and VT cycles were constructed. The sinus rhythm activation signature was defined as the cumulative number of multielectrode recording sites that had activated per time epoch, and its derivative was used to predict VT inducibility, and to define the sinus rhythm slow/late activation sequence. Results Plotting mean activation signature derivative, a best cutoff value was useful to separate experiments with reentrant VT inducibility (sensitivity: 42/50) versus non-inducibility (specificity: 39/43), with an accuracy of 81/93. For the 50 experiments with inducible VT, recording sites overlying a segment of isochrone encompassing the sinus rhythm slow/late activation sequence, spanned the VT isthmus location in 32 cases (64%), partially spanned it in 15 cases (30%), but did not span in 3 cases (6%). Conclusion The sinus rhythm activation signature derivative is assistive to differentiate substrate supporting reentrant VT inducibility versus non-inducibility, and to identify slow/late activation for targeting isthmus location.