title: Alternans and the onset of ventricular fibrillation.
abstract: Ventricular fibrillation (VF) remains a major cause of death in the industrialized world. Alternans (a period-doubling bifurcation of cardiac electrical activity) have recently been causally linked to the progression from ventricular tachycardia (VT) to VF, a more spatiotemporally disorganized electrical activity. In this paper, we show how alternans and thus VT degenerate to chaos via multiple, specific dynamical routes, largely associated with spatial components of VF dynamics, explaining failures of many recently proposed antiarrhythmic drugs. Identification of dynamical mechanisms for the onset of VF should lead to the design of future experiments and consequently to more effective antiarrhythmic drugs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Adams 109, 103 Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York 11549-1030, USA.
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Hastings
authors.forename: F H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Fenton
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Hotomaroglu
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Geetha
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gittelson
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nilson
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garfinkel
mesh_terms: D000200:Action Potentials; D000889:Anti-Arrhythmia Agents; D001145:Arrhythmias, Cardiac / Q000188:drug therapy; D018450:Disease Progression; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006801:Humans; D017180:Tachycardia, Ventricular / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology; D014693:Ventricular Fibrillation / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: D000889:Anti-Arrhythmia Agents