Gastrointestinal arrhythmias are associated with statistically significant fluctuations in systemic information dimension

Abstract

Although cardiac arrhythmias have been studied extensively, little is known about arrhythmic phenomena in the gastrointestinal (GI) system. In this study, we demonstrate for the first time that the onset of GI arrhythmias is associated with statistically significant fluctuations in the information dimension of the associated systems. We induced gastric and intestinal arrhythmias in pigs using surgical stomach division and mesenteric artery ligation, respectively. Both conditions lead to a decreased supply of blood to the GI tract, which is associated in humans with various potentially lethal conditions including chronic mesenteric ischemia, whose mortality rate is over 60%. During our experiments, we recorded simultaneous magnetocardiographic, magnetogastrographic and magnetoenterographic signals and concluded that, when GI circulation is compromised, the information dimensionality of the system fluctuates significantly. In conclusion, dimensionality may be an important diagnostic factor for the characterization of arrhythmias in the context of GI pathophysiology.