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(Circulation Research. 2001;89:e30.)
© 2001 American Heart Association, Inc.

Letter to the Editor

Ventricular Fibrillation: Mother Rotor or Multiple Wavelets?

Bum-Rak Choi, Tong Liu, Guy Salama

University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, Department of Cell Biology and Physiology, Pittsburgh, Pa, gsalama@pitt.edu

To the Editor:

In their Letter to the Editor, Drs Berenfeld, Pertsov, and Jalife¹ suggest that our recent article entitled "The Distribution of Refractory Periods Influences the Dynamics of Ventricular Fibrillation"² characterized the nature of wave organization during fibrillation. They also state that our study "provides important and useful information, particularly in regard to the existence of action potential duration gradients during VF." With respect to these comments, we should clarify that we did not focus on the nature of wave organization in ventricular fibrillation (VF), nor did we show the existence of action potential duration (APD) gradients during VF. We correlated APD gradients measured in hearts with a normal rhythm (either paced or sinus rhythm) with the distributions of mean activation intervals and fast Fourier transform (FFT) spectra around the epicardium from the same hearts in VF. The main conclusion is stated in the title of the article.²

Berenfeld et al¹ criticized the study claiming that we did not address technical issues and overinterpreted our data. Surprisingly, the issues that they raised and their concerns over the interpretation of the results were addressed and available through a careful reading of our article.

Berenfeld et al¹ deduced that we used an incorrect definition of "dominant frequency" as a monolithic frequency rather than the "maximum frequency" that can be found in more complex, multiple peak spectra. On the contrary, we adhered to the definition of dominant frequency as the maximum frequency, as used by Zaitsev et al.³ The problem, however, is how to objectively . . . [Full Text of this Article]