Different features of ventricular arrhythmias and the RR-interval dynamics in atrial fibrillation related to the patient's clinical characteristics: an analysis using RR-interval plotting.

The clinical features of ventricular arrhythmia and RR-interval dynamics in AF-patients remain unresolved. We successively plotted points on an X-Y plain as (X, Y) = (RRn, RRn + 1) from the consecutive RR-intervals of Holter ECGs. Eighty of 175 AF-patients were thus diagnosed to have ventricular arrhythmia based on the different plotting patterns between ventricular premature contractions (VPCs) and aberrations. Different characteristics of the RR-interval dynamics before VPCs were observed such as fixed or variable coupling, and a regular or irregular RR-interval sequence. Malignant arrhythmias occurred more frequently in AF-patients with variable coupling VPCs and/or an irregular RR-interval sequence before VPCs than in those with the fixed coupling VPCs and/or the regular RR-interval sequence before VPCs. The RR-interval plotting method enabled us to distinguish different types of VPCs which were related to the clinical characteristics of the AF-patients.