Studying for the last pathophysiology exam I read this: MI --> reduced CO --> dilation of heart --> increased pathway length for conduction --> allow impulse to re-enter muscle that is recovering refractoriness --> increased potential for circus movements --> VTTwo days after the test, I have still been trying to figure out what "circus movements" are and what they have to do with infarction. Here is what I found:
"If a ring of excitable tissue is stimulated at a single point, the subsequent waves of depolarisation pass around the ring. The waves eventually meet and cancel each other out, but, if an area of transient block occurred with a refractory period that blocked one wavefront and subsequently allowed the other to proceed retrogradely over the other path, then a self-sustaining circus movement phenomenon would result." Mines and Garrey
Anyway, it's a form of arrhythmia associated with ventricular fibrillation and one more bit of minutiae that I don't need to know about the heart. Alas.
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