Computer simulation of ventricular rate stabilization during atrial fibrillation

Ventricular rate instability in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and intact AV nodal conduction may cause patient symptoms. Previous studies have shown that ventricular pacing at rates less than the maximum intrinsic rate during AF resulted in ventricular rate stabilization. The results of this study show that a simplified AV nodal conduction model was able to simulate this finding. The mechanism was determined to be the protective nature of retrograde propagation of the ventricular paced beats which allowed a greater time to collide with and extinguish the short cycles due to the AF