A wide QRS-complex tachycardia with 1:1 ventriculoatrial conduction may present diagnostic difficulties, and multiple pacing maneuvers are often required for an accurate diagnosis. We report a case, in which observation of transient interval variation following atrio-His block quickly led to the

In this issue of the Journal, the study by Higgins et al. (1) from the trial of resynchronization therapy provides the opportunity to assess the current status of both the application of biventricular pacing and the construction of trial end points for new therapies in heart failure (HF). The devices used in this trial clearly improved functional capacity in those patients with major functional...

BACKGROUND AV delay optimisation of biventricular pacing devices (cardiac resynchronisation therapy, CRT) is performed in trials and recommended by current guidelines. The Doppler echocardiographic iterative method is the most commonly recommended. Yet whether it can be executed reliably has never been tested formally. METHODS 36 multinational specialists, familiar with using the echocardiogr...

Antitachycardia pacing (ATP) is widely used to terminate tachycardia before it proceeds to lethal fibrillation. The important prerequisite for successful ATP is unpinning of the spirals anchored to the obstacle by a series of stimuli. Here, to understand the mechanism of unpinning spirals by ATP, we propose a theoretical explanation based on a nonlinear eikonal relation and a kinematical model....

Our aim was to evaluate cardiac changes evoked by spontaneous and sound-induced arousals from sleep. Cardiac responses to spontaneous and auditory-induced arousals were recorded during overnight sleep studies in 28 young healthy subjects (14 males, 14 females) during non-rapid eye movement sleep. Computerized analysis was applied to assess beat-to-beat changes in heart rate, atrio-ventricular c...

Objective: Atrio-esophageal fistula is an infrequent but devastating complication of catheter-based ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF). Thermal esophageal injury may be the precursor of atrio-esophageal fistula. Here, we evaluated the role of esophageal temperature monitoring in preventing thermal esophageal injury during pulmonary vein isolation for AF with radiofrequency energy. Methods: In...

We described a case of a 54-year-old male who presented with dizziness and dyspnea due to cardiac metastasis of leiomyosarcoma. Cardiac metastasis of leiomyosarcoma caused both bradyarrhythmia and tachyarrhythmia in the patient. He was treated with implantation of a permanent pacemaker for management of complete atrio-ventricular block and anti-arrhythmic drug that suppressed ventricular tachyc...

A 48-year-old male with a symptomatic 2:1 atrio-ventricular block and a dual-chamber pacemaker, implanted one year previously, was admitted due to a syncopal episode. Pacemaker malfunction was identified as the cause of syncope. Subclavian crush syndrome was the cause of the pacemaker malfunction. Its incidence, consequences and management are discussed in this report.