In an effort to further clarify the mechanism of termination and perpetuation of atrial fibrillation (AF), the intraatrial potentials during AF induced by programmable electrical stimulation were analyzed using the concept of wavelength which represents the size of a microreentrant circuit. Thirty patients with inducible AF were divided into 2 groups: 20 patients with AF that terminated spontaneously (group 1) and 10 patients with AF that did not terminate spontaneously (group 2). Wavelength is the product of refractory period and conduction velocity. During AF, the refractory period of the local atrial tissue was considered to correlate with the mean interval between each intraatrial potential (mean ff). An inverse relation was considered present between conduction velocity of the impulse and the width of intraatrial potentials (f width). Thus, the wavelength index was defined as (mean ff)/(mean f width). Ten intraatrial potentials at the high right atrium were sampled for measurement. Group 1 had higher wavelength indexes just after the induction of AF than did group 2 (1.33 +/- 0.31 vs 1.10 +/- 0.05, p less than 0.05). In group 1, the wavelength indexes were increased from the initial value to 1.49 +/- 0.36 just before termination of AF (p less than 0.001). In 3 group 2 patients, AF stopped after disopyramide was administered intravenously, whereas the wavelength indexes at the end of AF were higher than those before drug administration (1.27 +/- 0.08 vs 1.16 +/- 0.04, p less than 0.05). In conclusion, prolongation of the wavelength appears to be a major determinant for termination of AF, and shorter wavelengths are necessary for perpetuation of AF.