Spatial domain analysis of late ventricular potentials. Intraoperative and thoracic correlations.

For investigation of late potentials seen on the signal-averaged electrocardiogram, intracardiac and thoracic distributions of terminal activity were analyzed in 16 patients undergoing cryosurgery for ventricular tachycardia after remote myocardial infarction. The body surface potentials measured with 63 time-averaged unipolar leads were compared with epicardial and endocardial potential maps in six patients without and 10 patients with bundle-branch block. Intracardiac post-QRS activity, defined as extending beyond the thoracic QRS offset, was found in five of six patients without bundle-branch block (83%) and in five of 10 patients with bundle-branch block (50%), corresponding to 4 +/- 5% of the total number of electrograms in each patient. Fragmentation, double deflections, and single deflections were observed in 27%, 34%, and 39%, respectively, of these post-QRS electrograms. Post-QRS activation patterns that were stable from beat to beat showed slow propagation around or within areas of conduction block. Post-QRS activity was most often observed on both epicardial and endocardial surfaces (five of 10 patients). In the six patients without post-QRS activity, an area of late activity displaying low-amplitude deflections that were masked by the terminal activation of the normal myocardium was identified. Isopotential maps of the high-pass-filtered (55-Hz) thoracic and intracardiac signals demonstrated a close spatial correlation between the location, amplitude, and orientation of the potential extrema observed over the thoracic, epicardial, or endocardial surfaces during post-QRS activity. The thoracic patterns were generally dipolar with close extrema for anteroseptal or apical sites of post-QRS activity and more distant extrema for other sites.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)