[工程科技]TherapiesforVentricularCardiac.pdfVIP

Critical Reviews™ in Biomedical Engineering, 33(6):557–604 (2005) Therapies for Ventricular Cardiac Arrhythmias Peter N. Jordan¹ David J. Christini¹,² 1Department of Physiology and Biophysics, 2Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, New York Address all correspondence to David J. Christini, Ph.D., Division of Cardiology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 520 East 70t Street, Starr 463, New York NY 10021, USA; dchristi@ ABSTRACT: During recent years, engineers and physicists have become increasingly interested in studying the electrical activity of the heart. Despite the fact that the heart is a complex and highly nonlinear system, its electrical behavior can be studied using a variety of experimental and clinical techniques, and can be modeled mathematically using relatively simple systems of diff erential equations, allowing scientists to perform both real and virtual (in silico) experiments to gain insights into its physiology and pathophysiology. Although these approaches have in recent years allowed great headway to be made into understanding the dynamic behavior of the heart, cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular fi brillation still claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of people each year in the United States alone. Bridging the gap between understanding the mechanistic bases of arrhythmias and applying such knowledge to improving therapy presents one of the greatest challenges in the fi eld of cardiac electrophysiology. In this review, we describe the basic electrical properties and dyn