V.N. Biktashev
Commissioned: July 2006. Submitted in final form: 2008/04/25. Published as Chapter 6.2 in "Cardiac Bioelectric Therapy. Mechanisms and Practical Implications", pages 493-510, I.R. Efimov, M.W. Kroll and P.J. Tchou, eds, Springer, 2009
Introduction: Early experiments on defibrillation revealed that it is sometimes possible to achieve defibrillation by lower voltage pulses, if they are applied several times and are properly timed [1]. In this chapter we review some ideas about detailed mechanisms how this method may work. Most of these ideas are theoretical and tested only in numerical simulations, or in "chemical model" of the cardiac tissue, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction medium; only in some cases experimentalists have attempted a direct verification in cardiac preparations. The literature on the sub ject is vast; as the space allocated for this review is limited, we shall focus on a few "cornerstone" ideas and somewhat arbitrarily selected examples.
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