Objective features of the surface electrocardiogram during ventricular tachyarrhythmias

The aim of this study was to quantify the electrocardiographic signal characteristics of three types of ventricular arrhythmia; monomorphic ventricular tachycardia, polymorphic ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. Patients in a coronary care unit were monitored using a single bipolar ECG lead. Thirty episodes of ventricular tachyarrhythmia (ten from each group) were recorded automatically by computer. Frequency analysis of ten consecutive 1 s epochs from each recording gave 100 spectra for each tachyarrhythmia group. Each spectrum was characterised by the frequency, width and proportional size of the dominant peak. Despite a qualitative similarity in spectral appearance, there were significant differrences in all characteristics between the tachyarrhythmia groups ( P