In the daily practice of pacemaker insertion, the occurrence of atrial and ventricular lead switch at the pacemaker box header is a rare and unintentional phenomenon, with less than five cases reported in the literature. The lead switch may have dire consequences, depending on the indication for the pacemaker. One of these consequences is pacemaker syndrome, in which the normal sequence of atri...

The risk of embolic stroke during sick sinus syndrome before cardiac pacemaker insertion is substantial, but stroke after pacemaker insertion has not been well studied. We observed 10 sick sinus syndrome patients who developed an ischemic stroke 4 days to 112 months after pacemaker insertion. Nine patients represented 6% of the 156 ischemic stroke patients observed during a 30-month period. Eig...

The interstitial cells of Cajal (ICCs) are the pacemaker cells in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. In the present study, the effects of Dangkwisoo‑san (DS) on pacemaker potentials in cultured ICCs from the small intestine of the mouse were investigated. The whole‑cell patch‑clamp configuration was used to record pacemaker potentials from cultured ICCs and the increase in intracellular Ca2+ conc...

We study the interplay between traveling action potentials and spatial inhomogeneities in the FitzHugh-Nagumo model to investigate possible mechanisms for the occurrence of fibrillatory states in the atria of the heart. Different dynamical patterns such as ectopic foci, localized and meandering spiral waves are found depending on the characteristics of the inhomogeneities. Their appearance in d...

BACKGROUND The expanding clinical indications of cardiac rhythm management have led to an increased use of pacemaker implantation which is associated with increased incidence of pacemaker infections. Staphylococcus aureus and epidermidis account for the vast majority of pacemaker infections. Pacemaker infection due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) is very rare, only few cases hav...

Infections involving cardiovascular implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) remain an unfortunate indication for repeated device-related procedures, including extractions and reimplantations. Recurrent infections involving transvenous leads and superficial device pockets may eventually lead to epicardial lead implantation and generator placement in deeper tissue planes, both of which require a m...

Background: Neonatal lupus erythematosus is an uncommon disease. Congenital complete heart block (CCHB) usually happens in neonates with maternal systemic lupus erythematosus. The most prevalent presentation of CCHBis bradycardiathatcanbediagnosed through an electrocardiogram. Case report: Here in, we present the case of a full-term male neonate with gestational age of 37 weeks and birth weigh...

It is well known that radiotherapy causes malfunctions of cardiac implantable electronic devices such as pacemaker (PM) and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator because of incidental neutron production. Here, we report our experience with two cases of PM reset among seven patients with PM who underwent proton beam therapy (PBT) from January 2011 to April 2015 at our centre. Our experience sho...

2799 According to a recent worldwide survey, current rates of de novo pacemaker and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation are higher than those of previous years at >700 000 and >200 000 per year, respectively. Parallel to the growth in cardiovascular implantable electronic device (CIED) use, technological advances have led to new sources of electromagnetic radiation. Modern...

BACKGROUND Pacemaker dependency (PD) can be defined as the risk of serious injury or death from sudden pacemaker failure, an event more dangerous than progressive rate decrease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the incidence of PD during long-term follow-up after pacing system implantation. METHODS AND RESULTS The study included 3638 patients (mean age 65.3 +/- 10.2 years). Indications f...