Sympathetic Nerves and Cardiac Propagation

What are the mechanisms by which sympathetic nerve activity triggers ventricular arrhythmia? Listen as Consulting Editor Crystal Ripplinger (University of California Davis) interviews lead author Olujimi Ajijola (University of California Los Angeles) and content expert Christian Meyer (University Heart Centre Hamburg) about this key question explored in the innovative work by Ajijola et al. In a chronically infarcted porcine model, Ajijola and co-authors investigated whether sympathetic activity modulated activation and conduction in normal hearts and post myocardial infarction. The authors found that right stellate stimulation had a stronger effect than left in normal hearts. Was the same true after myocardial infarction? Do the clinical implications of modulation of late potentials during sympathetic stimulation suggest that clinicians need to rethink their ablation mapping techniques? Listen and learn.

 

Olujimi A. Ajijola, Robert L Lux, Anadjeet Khahera, OhJin Kwon, Eric Aliotta, Daniel Ennis, Michael C. Fishbein, Jeffrey Laurence Ardell, Kalyanam Shivkumar Sympathetic Modulation of Electrical Activation In Normal and Infarcted Myocardium: Implications for Arrhythmogenesis Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol, published online January 13, 2017. DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00575.2016