Intra-beat Scaling Properties of Cardiac Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death

摘要

We applied detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) to characterize the intra-beat scaling dynamics of electrocardiographic (ECG) recordings from the PhysioNet Sudden Cardiac Death Holter Database. The main finding of this contribution is that, in such recordings involving different types of arrhythmias; the ECG waveform, besides showing a less-random intra-beat dynamics, becomes more regular during bigeminy, ventricular tachycardia (VT) or even atrial fibrillation (AFIB) and ventricular fibrillation (VF) despite the appearance of erratic traces. Thus, notwithstanding that these cardiac rhythm abnormalities are generally considered as irregular and some of them generated by random impulses or wavefronts, the intra-beat scaling properties suggest that regularity dominates the underlying mechanisms of arrhythmias. Among other explanations, this may result from shorted or restricted -less complex- pathways of conduction of the electrical activity within the ventricles.