this report describes a 55-year-old woman in whom yellow scorpion sting resulted in the development of mobitz type 1 and transient complete heart blocks unresponsive to atropine administration.  it might be concluded that although autonomic involvement including parasympathetic overactivity is present in such cases, other factors such as toxic damage to the cardiac conduction system may play a ...

This report describes a 55-year-old woman in whom yellow scorpion sting resulted in the development of Mobitz type 1 and transient complete heart blocks unresponsive to atropine administration.  It might be concluded that although autonomic involvement including parasympathetic overactivity is present in such cases, other factors such as toxic damage to the cardiac conduction system may play a ...

Cardiac conduction system (CCS) disease, which results in disrupted conduction and impaired cardiac rhythm, is common with significant morbidity and mortality. Current treatment options are limited, and rational efforts to develop cell-based and regenerative therapies require knowledge of the molecular networks that establish and maintain CCS function. Recent genome-wide association studies (GW...

BACKGROUND Mutations in the dystrophin gene produce clinical manifestations of disease in heart, brain, and skeletal muscle in patients with Duchenne and Beckers muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD). Conduction disturbances and heart block contribute to cardiac decompensation in these patients, which suggests an important role for dystrophia in the cardiac conduction system. We therefore examined the m...

Heart rate variability (HRV) has become an important clinical marker of cardiovascular health and a research measure for the study of the cardiac conduction system and its autonomic controls. While the zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an ideal vertebrate model for understanding heart development, HRV has only recently been investigated in this system. We have previously demonstrated that nkx2.5 and n...

Disturbances of the cardiac conduction system constitute a major risk after surgical repair of complex cases of congenital heart disease. Intraoperative identification of the conduction system may reduce the incidence of these disturbances. We previously developed an approach to identify cardiac tissue types using fiber-optics confocal microscopy and extracellular fluorophores. Here, we applied...

Background Ventricular conduction delay is thought to occur from a variety of differing mechanism including ischemia or infarction, left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy and/or dilation, and fibrotic degenerative disease of the conduction system. CMR is an ideal modality to evaluate for these mechanisms as cine-CMR is the “gold-standard” for assessment of cardiac morphology and function, and delaye...

Electrophysiologic delineation of the atrioventricular conduction system at surgery is described in two patients with corrected transpostion of the great arteries in situs inversus. Intra-atrial electrograms were recorded in one patient from sites immediately adjacent to the coronary sinus located in the left-sided right atrium. The intraventricular portion of the atrioventricular conduction sy...

Our understanding of the genetic basis of disease has expanded with the identification of rare DNA sequence variations ("mutations") that evoke inherited syndromes such as cystic fibrosis, congenital epilepsy, and cardiac arrhythmias. Common sequence variants ("polymorphisms") have also been implicated as risk factors in multiple diseases. Mutations in SCN5A, the cardiac Na(+) channel gene, tha...