P-wave Variability and Atrial Fibrillation

• DOI: 10.1038/srep26799
• Publication Date: 2016-05-26T09:21:45Z
• Authors: Federica Censi; Ivan Corazza; Elisa Reggiani; Giovanni Calcagnini; Eugenio Mattei; Michele Triventi; Giuseppe Boriani
• Keywords: Male; Multidisciplinary; Models, Cardiovascular; atrial fibrillation; prognostic markers; Cardiovascular Agents; Middle Aged; Sensitivity and Specificity; Article; Electrocardiography; 03 medical and health sciences; 0302 clinical medicine; Heart Conduction System; Recurrence; Area Under Curve; Atrial Fibrillation; Humans; Female; Heart Atria; Algorithms; Aged; Follow-Up Studies

AbstractThe analysis of P-wave template has been widely used to extract indices of Atrial Fibrillation (AF) risk stratification. The aim of this paper was to assess the potential of the analysis of the P-wave variability over time in patients suffering from atrial fibrillation. P-wave features extracted from P-wave template together with novel indices of P-wave variability have been estimated in a population of patients suffering from persistent AF and compared to those extracted from control subjects. We quantify the P-wave variability over time using three algorithms and we extracted three novel indices: one based on the cross-correlation coefficients among the P-waves (Cross-Correlation Index, CCI), one associated to variation in amplitude of the P-waves (Amplitude Dispersion Index, ADI), one sensible to the phase shift among P-waves (Warping Index, WI). The control group resulted to be characterized by shorter P-wave duration and by a less amount of fragmentation and variability, respect to AF patients. The parameter CCI shows the highest sensitivity (97.3%) and a good specificity (95%).