Programmed stimulation for simulation of atrial tachyarrythmias

Swine have become the preeminent non-human animal model for testing of cardiac assistance devices. Such devices must be robust to perturbations in the EKG; therefore it is expeditious, as part of cardiac assistance device testing, to simulate arrhythmias such as atrial flutter and fibrillation in swine. Methods for producing atrial tachyarrythmias include surgical ablation or crushing of atrial tissue and the administration of drugs. These are dangerous, unreliable and usually irreversible; in varying combinations and degrees. When we applied rapid evenly spaced electrical atrial pacing in swine, the variability of ventricular response was less than expected from the corresponding arrhythmia in man. We will describe efforts to produce reversible atrial tachyarrythmias in swine, using programmed stimulation, with the desired degree of ventricular response variability.