Abstract
Direct physiological evidence [1-4] exists that occurrences of arrhythmia are commonplace in the presence of infarct scars, where regions of normal and excitable myocardium are interspersed with regions of unexcitable myocardium. These regions form narrow and wide pathways for wave propagation and each of these pathways assumes a configuration that can be categorized into a particular type of border geometry.
The concept of critical curvature of the wavefront (introduced in chapter 9) provides a connection between pathway border geometry and the properties of surviving myocardium within the pathway and the appearance of a unidirectional conduction block. The conduction block facilitates the appearance of reentrant arrhythmias, which can in turn, lead to ventricular fibrillation.
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Kogan, B.J. (2010). Excitation Wave Propagation in Narrow Passes. In: Introduction to Computational Cardiology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76686-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76686-7_10
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