Electrical Stimulation of the Heart in the Study and Treatment of Tachycardia.

This slender monograph is a report of the author's observations in his department of cardiology in Amsterdam. The author states the suspicion that experiments on open-chested animals with cut cardiac nerves are subject to possible error has been dispelled by the experience with external electrical stimulation of the heart in man. The author presents a classification of tachycardias, summarizes the physical signs helpful in diagnosis, and emphasizes the difficulty in differentiating between supraventricular tachycardias with wide QRS complexes and ventricular tachycardias. The text of this monograph deals mainly with the use of bundle of His recordings and the response to external electrical stimulation of the heart by right atrial and ventricular electrodes to determine whether certain regular tachycardias represent atrial flutter, atrioventricular (AV) junctional tachycardia, or tachycardia related to the preexcitation syndrome. The bundle of His recordings were accomplished by passing two or more electrodes by the Seldinger technique