Study Of The Mechanism Of Chronic Atrial Fibrillation Of Rheumatic Heart Disease

BackgroundAtrial fibrillation(AF) is one of the most common and complicated arrhythmia. In China,AF is mainly caused by rheumatic heart disease. The finial aim of AF therapy is to ablate AF and restore sinus rhythm,this aim was not realized until Cox put up with the concept of maze procedure. But during the practice of surgical treatment of AF by maze procedure,it has been discoverd that the larger is the left atrium,the longer is the duration of AF.the worse is the result of maze procedure, this phenomenen leads people to pay more attention to the term of atrial remodeling(AR). Atrial remodeling(AR) includes atrial electrical remodeling(AER) and atrial anatomical remodeling(AAR).AER means changes in atrial electrophysiological character. AAR means changes in morphology and structure at tissue, cellular and subcellular level. Results of animal experiments and clinical studies suggest that AF is closely related to AR. AR plays an important role in the occuring and sustaining of AF .The mechanism study of Af is the base of raising the outcome of surgical trentment of AF.The result of 66 radiofrequency ablation maze procedures performed from 1994-4 to 1999-4 in our department is analysed in this paper,the influence of the size of left atrium and duration of AF on the result of maze procedure is discussed. Single human atrial myocytes was got by enzysmy digestion. The intracellular calcium concentration and changes in ionic channel currents of atrial myocytes of rheumatic heart disease with chronic AF is...