Cardiac arrhythmias are a frequent and important complication of cardiac failure regardless of aetiology. It might be expected that those afflicted would be aware of their occurrence, but surprisingly, even salvoes of ventricular tachycardia often are not perceived by patients. It has required 24 hour ambulatory electrocardiographic recordings to disclose the true prevalence of arrhythmias. The...

BACKGROUND Hyperoxic preconditioning is known to protect the heart against necrosis and contractile dysfunction, but protection against arrhythmias has not been well characterized. OBJECTIVE The authors hypothesized that pre-exposure to normobaric hyperoxia (H) reduces ischemia and reperfusion-induced arrhythmias in isolated rat hearts. METHODS Following 60 and 180 min of hyperoxia treatmen...

Introduction: It has been reported that traumas such as transverse abdominal incision before myocardial ischemia result in a significantly decreased infarct size. This phenomenon is named remote preconditioning of trauma. Since small skin burn is one of most common traumas, the effect of this injury on ischemia-induced arrhythmias and infarct size was investigated in a rat model of ischemia-...

BACKGROUND Electrocardiographic abnormalities and premature ventricular contractions are common in athletes and are generally benign. However, the specific outcome of high-level endurance athletes with frequent and complex ventricular arrhythmias is unclear. Also, information on the predictive accuracy of different investigations in this subgroup is unknown. RESULTS We report on 46 high-level...

OBJECTIVES To document the incidence of hypoxic episodes in a series of patients with impaired left ventricular function, and to correlate the occurrence of hypoxia with severity of arrhythmia. PATIENTS 34 patients with breathlessness and clinical evidence of left ventricular dysfunction. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Simultaneous overnight finger oximetry and electrocardiographic monitoring. RES...

Twenty patients clinically identified as having balloon deformity of the mitral valve were studied to assess the incidence of ventricular arrhythmias. Echocardiography and phonocardiography were used to confirm the nature of the mitral valve lesion. Continuous 24-hour electrocardiograms were obtained from all patients and analysed by a computer and 2 observers. One patient has ventricular fibri...

Sustained ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation are life-threatening arrhythmias with high rates of recurrence.1'2 Empiric antiarrhythmic drug therapy has a low success rate for preventing recurrences of these arrhythmias.3 Therefore, the choice of drug therapy has centered around two methodologies to predict drug efficacy: programmed ventricular stimulation with serial drug test...

Introduction Andersen-Tawil syndrome (ATS) is a rare autosomal dominant or sporadic disorder defined by a triad of periodic muscle paralysis, ventricular arrhythmias (long QT-7), and dysmorphic features. The estimated prevalence is 1 in 1,000,000. The underlying mutation is in the KCNJ2 gene encoding the inward rectifier potassium channels (Kir2.1) present in both skeletal and cardiac muscles. ...

Sustained ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation are life-threatening arrhythmias with high rates of recurrence.1'2 Empiric antiarrhythmic drug therapy has a low success rate for preventing recurrences of these arrhythmias.3 Therefore, the choice of drug therapy has centered around two methodologies to predict drug efficacy: programmed ventricular stimulation with serial drug test...

Two patients who underwent left ventricular bypass transplants are described. Both patients sustained postoperative rhythm disturbances of their own hearts during sinus rhythm of the donor hearts. Illustrative examples of atrial flutter, ventricular flutter, ventricular fibrillation, blocked atrial extrasystoles, and double ventricular parasystole in the recipient hearts are presented. The pati...