Celebrating 50 years of electrical therapies for the heart Around Fifty years ago, on 8 October 1958, Elmqvist and Senning, at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, implanted the first endocardial pacemaker to treat a patient with recurrent Adam–Stokes episodes.1 Since this pioneering experience, arrhythmia management has evolved enormously in the last 50 years, with electrophysiology being one of the areas of medicine where technology has had the strongest impact.2 The technologically driven evolution of devices and tools has been complemented by the acquisition of important scientific evidence of benefit in specific patient settings. Accumulation of hard evidence has allowed us to progress from pioneering experiences with pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), and ablative techniques in very sick subjects treated in a handful of research centres to widespread routine use of such interventions in hundreds of thousands of patients around the world. The type of therapeutic target has also evolved: from ‘rescue’ interventions in high-risk conditions (complete atrioventricular block for pacemakers, multiple cardiac arrests for ICDs, high-risk ventricular pre-excitation for ablation) to ‘preventive’ interventions designed to avoid the risk of serious consequences stemming from the development of severe bradyarrhythmias, ventricular tachyarrhythmias or supraventricular tachyarrhythmias, or related to heart failure. In view of the need to keep clinical practice abreast of the ongoing changes in the potential for care, this evolution has required extensive cooperation between physicians, scientists, engineers, manufacturers, regulatory agencies, and health care providers. Clearly, the rapidity and extent of change has many important practical implications, related to themes such as emerging clinical skills, the complexity of current technology, treatment costs, the need for consensus guidelines, re-organization of care delivery, and the potential of telemedicine. In this supplement we have collected some of the most prominent issues in the field today in the context of lessons learnt in these 50 years of co-operative engagement. We have chosen to spotlight topical issues within the broad spectrum of electrical therapies for the heart: antibradycardia pacing (current and new indications, sensors, autocapture, alternative sites of pacing, etc.); sudden death prevention (risk stratification, current use of ICDs, and barriers to implementation of current guidelines); cardiac resyncronization therapy for heart failure (patient selection, haemodynamic and clinical effects); arrhythmia ablation (indications and technical advances); atrial fibrillation management in the real world, and ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation (mapping and ablation techniques).

Electrical therapies for the heart: a 50-year story projected into the future / Boriani, Giuseppe; C., Linde; R., Sutton. - (2007), pp. 1-47.

Electrical therapies for the heart: a 50-year story projected into the future.

BORIANI, Giuseppe;
2007

Abstract

Celebrating 50 years of electrical therapies for the heart Around Fifty years ago, on 8 October 1958, Elmqvist and Senning, at the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, implanted the first endocardial pacemaker to treat a patient with recurrent Adam–Stokes episodes.1 Since this pioneering experience, arrhythmia management has evolved enormously in the last 50 years, with electrophysiology being one of the areas of medicine where technology has had the strongest impact.2 The technologically driven evolution of devices and tools has been complemented by the acquisition of important scientific evidence of benefit in specific patient settings. Accumulation of hard evidence has allowed us to progress from pioneering experiences with pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), and ablative techniques in very sick subjects treated in a handful of research centres to widespread routine use of such interventions in hundreds of thousands of patients around the world. The type of therapeutic target has also evolved: from ‘rescue’ interventions in high-risk conditions (complete atrioventricular block for pacemakers, multiple cardiac arrests for ICDs, high-risk ventricular pre-excitation for ablation) to ‘preventive’ interventions designed to avoid the risk of serious consequences stemming from the development of severe bradyarrhythmias, ventricular tachyarrhythmias or supraventricular tachyarrhythmias, or related to heart failure. In view of the need to keep clinical practice abreast of the ongoing changes in the potential for care, this evolution has required extensive cooperation between physicians, scientists, engineers, manufacturers, regulatory agencies, and health care providers. Clearly, the rapidity and extent of change has many important practical implications, related to themes such as emerging clinical skills, the complexity of current technology, treatment costs, the need for consensus guidelines, re-organization of care delivery, and the potential of telemedicine. In this supplement we have collected some of the most prominent issues in the field today in the context of lessons learnt in these 50 years of co-operative engagement. We have chosen to spotlight topical issues within the broad spectrum of electrical therapies for the heart: antibradycardia pacing (current and new indications, sensors, autocapture, alternative sites of pacing, etc.); sudden death prevention (risk stratification, current use of ICDs, and barriers to implementation of current guidelines); cardiac resyncronization therapy for heart failure (patient selection, haemodynamic and clinical effects); arrhythmia ablation (indications and technical advances); atrial fibrillation management in the real world, and ablation therapy for atrial fibrillation (mapping and ablation techniques).
2007
Oxford University Press
Electrical therapies for the heart: a 50-year story projected into the future / Boriani, Giuseppe; C., Linde; R., Sutton. - (2007), pp. 1-47.
Boriani, Giuseppe; C., Linde; R., Sutton
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11380/1080715
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