Assessment of Atrial Tissue Obtained From Patients Undergoing Heart Surgery

Atrial fibrillation (AF), a disorder of heart rhythm, is epidemic in the United States, affecting nearly 3 million people. AF arises in a variety of settings, often in association with other cardiac disease. Demographic and clinical factors can be utilized to profile "at-risk" patients, but the predictive value of such algorithms is low. The reasons for this presumably relate to the fact that these factors are interacting with the tissue substrate in a variable way. In addition, correlations such as these provide no insight into mechanisms associated with the development of AF in patients without other known heart disease, which is commonplace.

Over the past decade, techniques have been refined which permit an enormous amount of information relevant to disease mechanisms to be gained from examination of heart tissue. The Cardiovascular Institute has extensive experience with these techniques, and has utilized them to examine other heart disease substrates.

In this study, we propose to obtain heart tissue at the time of cardiac surgery which would otherwise be discarded. Our plan is to examine this tissue and correlate our findings with clinical data. Our hope is that the proposed study will provide insight into atrial physiology, including the molecular mechanisms underlying atrial disease and the potential development of AF.

This will be a prospective "registry" for atrial tissue. We propose an enrollment of 300 subjects, to take place at UPMC Presbyterian over a 5 year period.

Subjects will be recruited from among those patients referred for non-emergent surgery on the heart for standard indications. The patient's medical record will be reviewed and information recorded that includes demographics, heart disease history, other past medical history, current lab work, current drug therapy, and all cardiac testing the patient has undergone prior to surgery. Patients undergoing surgery will have residual atrial tissue which would otherwise be discarded (related to cannulation and/or appendectomy). Thus, obtaining this tissue will have no effect on the flow, duration, or outcome of the operative procedure.