The voltage clamp and cardiac electrophysiology.

• Although voltage clamp methods have been applied experimentally to cardiac tissue for over a decade, this field of study has failed to achieve general acceptance because of limitations of the experimental approach and difficulty in interpreting the results. Yet this technique is valuable within its limitations, and to dismiss it would be to lose a valuable tool. In perspective, most techniques in biological investigations have equivalent limitations. In this brief review we attempt to summarize the rationale behind the approach, the nature and tractability of limitations in the approach, and the results that we believe can be drawn safely from experimental studies to date. It is our hope that this review will serve to place the field in better perspective for the "nonclamper" than have the more detailed reviews in the past and that it will simultaneously indicate the future growth and trends in this field as we see them.