Simulated interactions between a Class III antiarrhythmic drug and a figure 8 reentry.

Ventricular Fibrillation is responsible for a majority of sudden cardiac death, but little is known about how ventricular tachycardia (VT) degenerates into ventricular fibrillation. Several clinical studies focused only on preventing VT with a class III antiarrhythmic drug resulted in many deaths. Our simulations investigate the interactions between an antiarrhythmic drug likely to suppress a VT and a Figure 8 reentry.

[Feasibility of prosthesis insertion by laparotomy as palliative treatment for malignant duodenal stenosis].

The authors report a preliminary series assessing the feasibility of duodenal stenting using a surgical approach. The study included 16 patients with a malignant duodenal outlet obstruction for whom a biliaryobstruction necessitated a laparotomyor following an endoscopic stenting failure. The stent was efficient in 15 patients with a complete relieve of obstruction.

Model-based interpretation of cardiac beats by evolutionary algorithms: signal and model interaction.

This paper presents a new approach for cardiac beat interpretation, based on a direct integration between a model and observed ECG signals. Physiological knowledge is represented by means of a semi-quantitative model of the cardiac electrical activity. The interpretation of cardiac beats is formalized as an optimization problem, by minimizing an error function defined between the model's output and the observations.

Numerically solving physiological models based on a polynomial approach.

Much research effort has been directed in different physiological contexts towards describing realistic behaviors with differential equations. One observes obviously that more state-variables give the model more accuracy. Unfortunately, the computational cost involved is higher.