Noise effects on the complex patterns of abnormal heartbeats - art. no. 068104

Patients at high risk for sudden death often exhibit complex heart rhythms in which abnormal heartbeats are interspersed with normal heartbeats. We an alyze such a complex rhythm in a single patient over a 12-h period and show that the rhythm can be described by a theoretical model consisting of two interacting oscillators with stochastic elements. By varying the magnitude of the noise, we show that for an intermediate level of noise, the model gi ves best agreement with key statistical features of the dynamics.