PURPOSE OF REVIEW The optimal treatments for atrial fibrillation have long been sought among rhythm control and rate control strategies. Unfortunately, rhythm control strategies with antiarrhythmic drugs have proven to be a disappointment. Catheter ablation techniques, however, have been rapidly advancing and have the potential to offer a permanent cure. Rhythm control with catheter ablation ma...

When a drug is prescribed for a patient with a permanent pacemaker or an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), consideration must be given to the potential interactions. Drug effect on pacemaker performance is usually thought to cause an increase or decrease in pacing threshold. From a practical view, Class IC drugs must be used cautiously in pacemaker patients, especially in those who ...

The incidence and severity of tachyarrhythmias, both supraventricular tachycardia and ventricular tachycardia may increase during pregnancy. Although the reasons for this observation are unclear, some explanations have been proposed: increased awareness, haemodynamic, hormonal, autonomic, and emotional changes related to pregnancy, which may include: increases in plasma catecholamine concentrat...

Twenty patients with frequent ventricular ectopic beats had a 5 1/2 hour ECG rhythm strip recorded. Individual patients showed a marked spontaneous variability from one half-hour to the next in the total number of ectopic beats (-99% to +1100%) and the occurrence of pairs or salvos. Although no patient received antiarrhythmic drugs, some patients showed a spontaneous change in arrhythmia which ...

Background. A main side effect of antiarrhythmic drug therapy is the tendency of these drugs to promote arrhythmia within the therapeutic concentration range, i.e., the proarrhythmic activity of these drugs. However, a model for in vitro assessment, quantification, and comparison of proarrhythmic drug activities was still lacking, and only sparse data were available. Methods and Results. To ana...

IT IS NOW well established that block of transmem-brane ionic channels is frequently time and voltage dependent.' 2 Although the modulated receptor theory has been most extensively studied for sodium and calcium channels in cardiac tissue,3 it may apply to other membrane receptors as well. The present essay is limited to discussion of sodium-channel blockers and how their time-and voltage-depen...

Since Schaper and his coworkers1-3 reported an excellent coronary vasodilating action of lidofiazine, a drug originally prepared in Janssen Pharmaceutica Institute, on conscious dogs with a previously implanted electromagnetic flow meter, the antianginal effect of the drug has been clinically investigated in our own and other laboratories. Its usual dose is 90 or 120mg per day. Recently, we adm...

The treatment of cardiac arrhythmias has undergone a sea change with the advent of catheter ablative procedures (radiofrequency ablation) and use of implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). The antiarrhythmic drugs at times are used to prevent device related arrhythmia rather than being used for primary treatment of arrhythmias. Antiarrhythmic drugs are grouped according to their drug acti...