A spontaneously active focus drives a model atrial sheet more easily than a model ventricular sheet

Tachycardias can be produced when focal activity at ectopic locations in either the atria or the ventricles propagates into the surrounding quiescent myocardium. Isolated rabbit atrioventricular nodal cells were coupled by an electronic circuit to a real-time simulation of an array of cell models. We investigated the critical size of an automatic focus for the activation of two-dimensional arrays made up of either ventricular or atrial model cells. Over a range of coupling conductances for the arrays, the critical size of the focus cell group for successful propagation was smaller for activation of an atrial versus a ventricular array. Failure of activation of the arrays at smaller focus sizes was due to the inhibition of pacing of the nodal cells. At low levels of coupling conductance, the ventricular arrays required larger sizes of the focus due to failure of propagation even when the focus was spontaneously active. The major differences between activation of the atrial and ventricular arrays is due to the higher membrane resistance (lower inward rectifier current) of the atrial cells.