THE EFFECT OF AN INJURED AREA ON THE ELECTRICAL FIELD OF THE HEART BASED ON EXPERIMENTS WITH MODELS

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Abstract
The electrical field was explored in models made to represent in simple form the syncytial cell of a normal heart and a heart with an injured, unresponsive area. In the "normal heart" model during electrical diastole the entire external or body field was an equipotential region at the same potential as the external surface of the "polarized cell membrane," i.e., positive with respect to ground. During electrical systole when depolarization was complete the entire field was at ground potential. In the "injured heart" model during electrical diastole the external field was still positive throughout with respect to ground; however, it was no longer an equipotential region because the "injured region" was only partially polarized. This led to the flow of the resting injury current. During electrical systole the potential distribution in the field was altered due to the depolarization of "uninjured" portions of the "cell membrane," while the "injured region," being unresponsive, retained its partial polarization. This gave rise to the activity injury current. These models showed that distant points in the external field may experience large changes in potential with respect to ground between diastole and systole, and so cannot be considered to be indifferent. Further, the resting injury current and the activity injury current and hence the monophasic curve of injury can be explained on the basis of the classical membrane theory. The activity injury current is due to the depolarization of uninjured regions and not to any process occurring within the injured area.

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