Benchmarking ventricular arrhythmias in the mouse—revisiting the ‘Lambeth Conventions’ 20 years on

The isolated Langendorff-mode perfused heart has become a valuable experimental model, used extensively to examine cardiac function, pathophysiology and pharmacology. For the clinical cardiologist an ECG is often a simple practicality, however in experimental circumstances, particularly with ex vivo murine hearts it is not always possible to obtain an ECG due to experimental recording constraints. However, the mechanical record of ventricular contractile function can be highly informative in relation to electrical state. It is difficult though to achieve consistency in these evaluations of arrhythmia as a validated common reference framework is lacking. In 1988, a group of investigators developed the ‘Lambeth Conventions’—a standardised reference for the definition and classification of arrhythmias in animal experimental models of ischaemia, infarction and reperfusion in vivo. Now, two decades later it is timely to revisit the Lambeth Conventions, and to update the guidelines in the context of the marked increase in murine heart study in experimental cardiac pathophysiology. Here we describe an adjunct to the Lambeth Conventions for the reporting of ventricular arrhythmias post-ischaemia in ex vivo mouse hearts when ECG recordings are not employed. Of seven discrete and identifiable patterns of mechanical dysrhythmia observed in reperfusion, five could be classified using conventional ECG terminology: ventricular premature beat, bigeminy, trigeminy, ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. Two additional rhythm variations detected from the pressure record are described (potentiated contraction and alternans).