THE DEVELOPMENT AND CONTOUR OF CARDIAC INJURY POTENTIAL

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Abstract
By applying increasing increments of suction to a small region of heart muscle the development of the injury potentials of rest and activity has been observed. When completely developed the injury potential curve of activity is fundamentally monophasic in form and consists of only 2 parts: 1) a part in which the resting potential, negative with respect to uninjured resting muscle, is rapidly abolished and replaced by a potential positive with respect to the same reference, and 2) a slower and continued decline of the potential to the resting state. Modifications in this curve causing it to depart from this strictly monophasic type may result from 2 factors, inclusion of action potentials from uninjured regions of the muscle and from incomplete or non-uniform injury. The former occur most prominently in bipolar leads, are less often present in unipolar leads, and usually absent in coaxial leads. The latter effects are prominent during the development of suction injuries or during their subsidence and are always present in injury potential curves derived from burned or crushed regions. It is shown by several exptl. methods that the injury potential of activity is derived solely from the region of injury or the immediately contiguous tissue. The electrode on uninjured tissue contributes to the recorded curve only by the addition of action potential components arising from the region of the electrode or from normal heart tissue intervening between the 2 electrodes.

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