Distance and Similarity Measurements of P Waves Before and After Pulmonary Vein Isolation in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation

[EN] This study aimed to assess electric markers obtained from the surface electrocardiogram in order to analyse significant differences before and after pulmonary vein isolation in patients who suffered from paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. 30 patients who underwent catheter ablation (in order to permanently restore sinus rhythm and stop atrial fibrillation episodes) were included in the study. Both surface electrocardiogram and intracavitary recordings were simultaneously acquired starting some minutes before catheter ablation began until the whole procedure successfully ended. P-waves have been delineated on V1 lead, and measurements of distances and similarities between them have been obtained to compare the recordings. It has been found that distances between Pwaves significatively decrease (about 14%) whereas similarities significatively increase (about 3%) after catheter ablation. The use of these features would help to identify the success of the catheter ablation procedure, which is the main objective of this preliminary study: the non-invasive identification of spontaneous reconnection of pulmonary veins, the main cause of the arrhythmia recurrences.N. Ortigosa acknowledges the support from Generalitat Valenciana under grant Prometeo/2017/102; from Spanish Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte en el marco del Programa Estatal de Promocion del Talento y su Empleabilidad en I+D+i -Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad- under grant Jose Castillejo CAS18/00396; from Spanish MINECO under grant MTM2016-76647-P, and from VLC-BIOMED 2017 (Universitat de Valencia and Hospital La Fe / IIS La Fe) under grant 10-ARVEAP-GALBIS-CANO2017-A.Ortigosa, N.; Cano, Ó.; Mainardi, L. (2019). Distance and Similarity Measurements of P Waves Before and After Pulmonary Vein Isolation in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation. IEEE. 87-90. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2019.8857563879