Helical representation of atrial reentry: A teaching aid for electrophysiology

Loop Diagrams of Reentry. Cardiac clinical electrophysiology is difficult t o teach because it requires mental integration of complex information on ca rdiac activation, which includes tridimensional spatial orientation of the cardiac structures involved and variables such as refractory period, conduc tion velocity, and cycle length. Commonly used representations of cardiac a rrhythmias include snapshot sequences or ladder diagrams. The former lack t ime dimension, and the latter lack spatial dimension. We propose a schemati c tridimensional representation of reentry as a helicoidal shape that is th e result of adding a time dimension to a circular representation. This pres entation, which also can be called a "loop diagram,'' allows better integra tion of spatial phenomena with recorded electrogram sequences and can help the teaching of basic clinical electrophysiology.