DURING THE PAST 8 YEARS cardiac pacemakers have found an important use in the immediate and prolonged treatment of postoperative or spontaneously occurring heart block in which the idioventricular rate has become too slow to provide adequate cardiac output. Scarcely a major hospital in the country lacks one of these electronic devices. For the treatment of Stokes-Adams disease with heart block ...

The subcellular mechanism of cell-to-cell communication in the natural pacemaker region of the mammalian heart was studied using electrophysiological and immunofluorescence techniques in isolated pairs of rabbit sinus nodal cells. By measuring whole-cell currents using a double patch-clamp approach, it was demonstrated that communication in the sinus node is mediated through gap junctional chan...

After the introduction of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in clinical practice by Mirowski in 1980 [Mirowski et al., 1980] the first available devices offered only a basic ventricular pacing option. Since approximately 5-20% of patients with an indication for ICD therapy following implantation criteria at that time (secondary prevention) needed antibradycardia pacing as well, t...

Cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) have become frequently used therapeutic modalities. CIEDs include pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), devices for heart failure management (cardiac resynchronization), and implantable hemodynamic monitors. Selection of the appropriate CIED, its implantation, and follow-up care require expertise to achieve optimal therapeutic...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) undergoing endoscopic electrosurgery (EE) are at a risk of electromagnetic interference (EMI). We aimed to analyze the effects of EE in CIED patients. METHODS Patients with CIED who underwent EE procedures such as snare polypectomy, endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatog...

“Functional Integration of Electrically Active Cardiac Derivatives From Genetically Engineered Human Embryonic Stem Cells With Quiescent Recipient Ventricular Cardiomyocytes” To the Editor: The article by Xue et al1 on human embryonic stem cellderived pacemakers illustrates that embryonic stem cells differentiated into spontaneously beating cardiocytes may function as biological pacemakers and ...

Introduction: Beat-to-beat variation in heart rate shows a complex dynamics, and this complexity is changed during systemic inflammatory response syndrome (e.g. sepsis). It is not known whether or not cardiac pacemaker dynamical rhythm is affected by sepsis. The aim of this study was to investigate heart rate dynamics of isolated heart as well as expression of pacemaker channels (HCN) in a r...

background : patients undergoing pacemaker implantation often experience anxiety and fear. as such, studies have focused on the mechanisms that relieve the negative emotions caused by the intervention. continuous nursing is a safe and effective nursing mode. in this study, continuous nursing intervention was provided for elderly patients undergo-ing pacemaker implantation and an empirical inves...

conclusions in the children in this study, pacemaker accelerometers failed to meet physiological demands. results basal heart rates, maximal heart rates, and exercise tolerance were significantly lower in the children with pacemakers. age, sex, and body mass index had no effect on the heart rate slope during the exercise test. there was no significant difference between epicardial and endocardi...

"Funny" (f) channels underlie the cardiac "pacemaker"I(f) current, originally described as an inward current activated on hyperpolarization to the diastolic range of voltages in sino-atrial node myocytes [Brown, HF, DiFrancesco, D, Noble, SJ. How does adrenaline accelerate the heart? Nature 1979;280:235-236]. The involvement of funny channels in the generation and modulation of cardiac pacemake...