The tendency of atrial or ventricular fibrillation to terminate spontaneously in finite-sized tissue is known as the critical mass hypothesis. Previous studies have shown that dynamical instabilities play an important role in creating new wave breaks that maintain cardiac fibrillation, but its role in self-termination, in relation to tissue size and geometry, is not well understood. This study ...

Objective: Alterations in serum levels of sodium may lead to cardiac arrhythmia by affecting the membrane potentials of cardiac cells. Previous studies have documented the association between postoperative atrial fibrillation and reduction in serum magnesium level after cardiovascular surgery well. However, there is no study assessing the relationship between serum sodium concentration and atri...

BACKGROUND Atrial fibrillation in the elderly is common and potentially life threatening. The classical sign of atrial fibrillation is an irregularly irregular pulse. OBJECTIVE The objective of this research was to determine the accuracy of pulse palpation to detect atrial fibrillation. METHODS We searched Medline, EMBASE, and the reference lists of review articles for studies that compared...

Identifying independent risk factors for stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation is important for 2 main reasons: it sheds light on stroke pathogenesis associated with this common cardiac dysrhythmia, and it allows stratification of stroke risk for individual patients. Both are keys to prevention of the unduly large cardioembolic brain infarcts that complicate atrial fibrillation. Among non...

BACKGROUND Warfarin therapy is effective for the prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. However, warfarin therapy is underutilized even among ideal anticoagulation candidates. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of warfarin in both inpatients and outpatients with atrial fibrillation within a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital system. METHODS This retrospective med...

BACKGROUND Left atrial appendage obliteration was historically ineffective for the prevention of postoperative stroke in patients with rheumatic atrial fibrillation who underwent operative mitral valvotomy. It is, however, a routine part of modern "curative" operations for nonrheumatic atrial fibrillation, such as the maze and corridor procedures. METHODS To assess the potential of left atria...

INTERRUPTION of ventricular fibrillation with the use of drugs has generally been found to be unsuccessful. Previous work on local anesthetic agents suggested that such compounds could terminate ventricular fibrillation; however, Stearns, Maison and Stutzman reported little success with the use of procaine. Wegria and co-workers' conclude in their studies that procaine may stop fibrillation; ho...

OBJECTIVE To assess long term mortality and identify factors associated with the development of permanent atrial fibrillation after atrioventricular (AV) node ablation for drug refractory paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. DESIGN Retrospective cohort study. SETTING UK tertiary centre teaching hospital. PATIENTS Patients admitted to the University Hospital Birmingham between January 1995 and ...

Rhythmic fibrillation potentials are the hallmark of denervated muscle fibres in needle EMG of a striated muscle (Conrad et al. 1972, Heckmann & Ludin 1982). They are readily activated by the insertion of an EMG needle electrode (Kugelberg & Petersén 1949). Irregular fibrillation potentials may also be present (Buchthal & Rosenfalck 1966, Purves & Sakmann 1974). There is, however, an obvious di...

INTRODUCTION The purpose of our study was to evaluate the effect of repeated cardioversion with an implantable atrial defibrillator on the clinical outcome of patients with atrial fibrillation. METHODS AND RESULTS The effects of the implantable atrial defibrillator on the total duration of atrial fibrillation, number of atrial fibrillation recurrences, and left atrial size were evaluated pros...