Study of Reentrant Waves in Simulated Myocardial Ischemia / 航天医学与医学工程

ABSTRACT

Objective To study ischemic effects on reentrant activities and cardiac arrhythmias using a computational approach. Method The Noble 98 mathematical model of ventricular cell was used in the study. The operator splitting and adaptive time step methods were utilized to integrate the partial differential equations in cardiac conduction models. The ischemic cells were simulated by decreasing the intracellular ATP concentration, reducing the Na+ conductance, and increasing the extracellular K+ concentration in a two-dimensional tissue. Spiral waves were initiated by the cross field technique. Result The results showed that spiral waves in local severe ischemia displayed three different morphologies,whereas in moderate ischemia only two kinds of wave forms exhibited. When the degree of ischemia reached a critical value, the reentrant wave could break. But for larger areas of ischemia spiral wave formed a typical functional reentry around the obstacle. Conclusion The study demonstrates that size and level of ischemia have effects on VTs and VFs. Large ischemic area is beneficial for maintenance of spiral wave and can provide a high probability in the genesis of VTs. Spiral waves can easily break up and degenerate into VFs under critical area or level of ischemia.