Short- and long-term prognosis of syncope, risk factors, and role of hospital admission: results from the STePS (Short-Term Prognosis of Syncope) study.

Objective: We sought to assess short- and long-term prognosis of syncope and associated risk factors.

Background: Syncope is a common clinical event, but our knowledge of its short-term outcome is largely incomplete. Further, it is unknown whether hospital admission might positively affect a patient's syncope prognosis.

Atrial Fibrillation and Revascularization Procedures: Clinical and Prognostic Significance. Incidence, Predictors, Treatment, and Long-Term Outcome.

[This retracts the article on p. 50 in vol. 7.

Atrial fibrillation and revascularization procedures: clinical and prognostic significance. Incidence, predictors, treatment, and long-term outcome.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common disorder of cardiac rhythm. In spite of simplicity of diagnosis, patients with atrial fibrillation are difficult to treat. In the recent years with the description of the phenomenon called remodelling, it has been possible to better define the principal mechanisms responsible for initiation, maintenance and, in some instances, termination of atrial fibrillation.

Early outcomes of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest after early defibrillation: a 24 months retrospective analysis.

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease remains the most common cause of death in the United States and most other Western nations. Among these deaths, sudden, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest claims approximately 1000 lives each day in the United States alone. Most of these cardiac arrests are due to ventricular fibrillation.

Sensors for rate responsive pacing.

Advances in pacemaker technology in the 1980s have generated a wide variety of complex multiprogrammable pacemakers and pacing modes. The aim of the present review is to address the different rate responsive pacing modalities presently available in respect to physiological situations and pathological conditions. Rate adaptive pacing has been shown to improve exercise capacity in patients with chronotropic incompetence.

Atrial fibrillation and pacing algorithms.

Pacing prevention algorithms have been introduced in order to maximize the benefits of atrial pacing in atrial fibrillation prevention. It has been demonstrated that algorithms actually keep overdrive atrial pacing, reduce atrial premature contractions, and prevent short-long atrial cycle phenomenon, with good patient tolerance. However, clinical studies showed inconsistent benefits on clinical endpoints such as atrial fibrillation burden.

Pacemaker prevention therapy in drug-refractory paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: reliability of diagnostics and effectiveness of prevention pacing therapy in Vitatron selection device.

Introduction: Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most common and rising disorder of cardiac rhythm, is quite difficult to control and/or to treat. Non pharmacological therapies for AF may involve the use of dedicated pacing algorithms to detect and prevent atrial arrhythmia that could be a trigger for AF onset. Selection 900E/AF2.