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Circulation, Vol 82, 2035-2043, Copyright © 1990 by American Heart Association

ARTICLES

Differentiation of ventricular tachyarrhythmias

KM Ropella, JM Baerman, AV Sahakian and S Swiryn
Department of Biomedical and Electrical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

Implantable devices capable of several modes of therapy will require differentiation of various ventricular tachyarrhythmias. Three methods of arrhythmia analysis, magnitude-squared coherence, ventricular rate, and irregularity of cycle length were performed for 45 episodes of induced ventricular tachyarrhythmia in 15 patients. Differentiation of monomorphic ventricular tachycardia from polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation was possible by mean magnitude- squared coherence, less possible by rate, and not possible by beat-to- beat irregularity. Faster monomorphic ventricular tachycardia overlapped with rates of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. Differentiation of polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation was not possible by rate or irregularity. A progressive decrease in mean magnitude-squared coherence from monomorphic ventricular tachycardia to polymorphic ventricular tachycardia to ventricular fibrillation strengthens previous observations that coherence is a measure of rhythm "organization."