Wiley-Blackwell Discontinuous Conduction in the Heart (American Heart Association Monograph S.)

Discontinuity in cardiac construction, multidimensional divergence and andisotropy in intertissue and intercellular communication between cardiocytes is an important feature of the mechanisms determining the coordination and spread of electrical activation throughout the heart. Indeed, it is of critical importance – as the source of arrythmic disturbances, it claims the lives of thousands of patients each year. Although such dysfunction within macroscopic pathways of conduction has long been recognized as part of the "anatomical substrate" of many life threatening arrhythmias, it has only been recently discovered that microscopic discontinuities between cells of the contracting nyocardium also modulate conductivity, on a beat–by–beat, day–by–day basis – and can eventually result in aberrant macroscopic condition. This text, part of the American Heart Association Monograph Series, presents a series of expert views on discontinuous conduction, each encompassing a different dimension of cellular biological, molecular, or electrophysiological diversity, at different structural levels within the heart. The goal, however, is to review not only laboratory results, but to consider their implications for antiarrhythmic intervention. No other book provides such detailed or exclusive focus on the issue of discontinuous conduction – or how the emerging knowledge in this area might well point to safer and more effective ways of treating arrhythmic disease.