Atrial electrophysiologic remodeling: Another vicious circle?

AF-Induced Electrophysiologic Remodeling. Introduction: With few exceptions , acquired heart disease is the result of gradual changes in the heart, pro gressing during several months or years. This also includes certain cardiac arrhythmias, as for instance atrial fibrillation (AF), In spite of the imp ortant role of slowly progressing pathologic processes, most of our knowled ge about mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias is based on acute experiments. O nly recently, the attention also is more focused on long-term adaptation pr ocesses like cardiac memory, electrical remodeling, and tachycardia-induced cardiomyopathy, In experimental animal models, it has been shown that AF i nduces a vicious circle of electrophysiologic and structural changes that i nevitably leads to "domestication" of the arrhythmia ("AF begets AF"), In t his article, the studies on AF-induced electrophysiologic and cellular remo deling are discussed.