[Atrial late potential by P wave-triggered signal-averaged electrocardiogram and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation].

Atrial fibrillation (AF), which is rather a common disease has a high risk of developing systemic embolism and stroke. Accordingly it can be significant for us to predict a patient at risk for AF during sinus rhythm Recently signal averaged ECG triggered by P wave has been expected to detect atrial late potential (ALP), which is thought to coincide with fractionated ECG significantly recorded directly from atrial muscle of a patient with paroxysmal AF. Although many time-domain ALP indices have been proposed, those excepting filtered P duration remain controversial with their diagnostic criteria having not yet been established, many studies agree as to the prolongation of filtered P duration, as observed for patients with AF. Although, also recently, frequency domain method has been applied to ALP for FFT analysis with the view of detecting ALP possibly undetectable by time domain method, no results better than the above method have been obtained, and further examination is hoped for.