Effects of ectopic pacing on left ventricular repolarization were studied in six anesthetized open-c hest chickens. In each animal, unipolar electrograms were acquired from as many as 98 sites with 14 plunge needles (seven transmural locations between epicardium and endocardium in each needle). Activation-recovery intervals (ARIs), corrected to the cycle length, were used for estimating repolarization. At baseline, the nonuniform ARI distribution in the left ventricle resulted in the apicobasal differences being greater than the transmural gradient. Nonuniform ARI prolongation caused by ectopic pacing resulted in decreasing the transmural repolarization gradient and increasing the differences in th e apex-to-base direction. The basal, but not apical transmural differences contributed to the total left ventricular transmural gradient. The total left ventricular apicobasal gradient was contribute d by the apicobasal differences in mid-myocardial and subendoc ardial layers more than in subepicardial ones. Thus, in in situ chicken hearts, the transmural and apicobasal ARI gradients exist within the left ventricle with the shortest ARIs in the basal subepicardium and the longest ARIs in the subendocardium of th e apical and middle parts of the left ventricle. Apicobasal compar ed to transmural heterogeneity of local repolarization properties contributes more to the total left ventricular repolarization gradient., S. N. Kharin, D. N. Shmakov, N. A. Antonova., and Obsahuje bibliografii