Introduction: Ectopic activity in pulmonary veins (PVs) triggers atrial fibrillation (AF). Although the PV excitation is considered as a crucial factor for AF, information on PV activity in healthy subjects is missing due to the lack of a noninvasive evaluation modality. We reported that high-sensitive vector magnetocardiography (VMCG) detected the right and left PV activity noninvasively. Thus we aimed to assess the PV activity in healthy controls and AF patients using VMCG.
Methods: Thirty-five healthy subjects and 41 AF patients were enrolled. VMCG was recorded for 2 minutes during sinus rhythm.
Results: Five cases out of 76 were excluded due to a large noise level. VMCG detected the left and/or right PV activity in all AF patients. However, in the healthy subjects VMCG revealed PV activity on the left in 6 cases (19.4%), the right in 8 cases (25.8%), and on both sides in 3 cases (9.7%). The remaining 14 cases (45.2%) exhibited no signals.
Conclusions: Half of the healthy subjects had no PV activity. The noninvasive evaluation of the PV activity by VMCG has the potential for risk stratification of AF.