Wellendynamik

Projektdaten

Beschreibung

Sudden Cardiac Death, for example caused by malignant ventricular arrhythmias results in an estimated 600.000 deaths per year in the European Community alone. The chaotic electrical excitation wave dynamics underlying such arrhythmias like ventricular fibrillation is, however, not fully understood.
It is known, that fragments of (unstable) spiral or scroll waves drive the spatio-temporal dynamics during ventricular fibrillation and prevent a coherent mechanical contraction of the heart. The current clinical treatment consists of the application of a high-energy defibrillation shock, delivered either from an external device, or from Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). In both cases, patients suffer from significant side effects due to this treatment, including additional tissue damage and post-traumatic stress. In the last decades, several groups have been working on the development of alternative control strategies, with the aim to significantly reduce these side effects while reliably terminating the arrhythmia and restoring sinus rhythm. Many of these approaches use sequences of electrical stimulations of lower amplitude, in contrast to the conventional treatment consisting of a single high energy defibrillation shock. For example, pulse trains of electric low-intensity stimuli with a specific frequency were used to terminate atrial fibrillation and ventricular fibrillation. Also different stages, each consisting of specific pulse sequences, were combined to terminate atrial fibrillation.