Atrial Fibrillation [Paperback]

1 The Cardiac Conducting System and Its Autonomic Control.- Anatomy of the Conducting System.- Basic Cardiac Electrophysiology.- The Initiation and Propagation of the Cardiac Impulse.- Resetting the Sinoatrial Node Pacemaker.- The Spread of the Impulse Through the Atria.- The Functioning of the Atrioventricular Node.- Does the Atrioventricular Node Conduct?.- Autonomic Innervation of the Heart.- Autonomic Control of the Sinoatrial Node.- Autonomic Control of the Atrioventricular Node.- 2 The Pathophysiology of Atrial Fibrillation.- Pathology.- The Electrophysiology of Atrial Fibrillation.- Electrophysiological Factors that Predispose to Atrial Fibrillation.- Initiation of Atrial Fibrillation.- The Mapping of Atrial Flutter and Fibrillation: The Essential Distinction Between Them.- The Ventricular Response in Atrial Fibrillation.- The Input to the Atrioventricular Node.- The Ventricular Response in Atrial Fibrillation.- The Role of the Autonomic Nervous System in Atrial Fibrillation.- Autocorrelation and the Baroflex.- Fibrillatory Waves in Atrial Fibrillation.- The Brody Phenomenon in Atrial Fibrillation.- The QT Interval in Atrial Fibrillation.- Is the QT Interval in Atrial Fibrillation Different from that in Sinus Rhythm?.- Atrial Fibrillation and the Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome.- Aberration in Atrial Fibrillation.- 3 Models of the Atrioventricular Node.- The Electrophysiological Model of the Atrioventricular Node.- Analogue Models of the Atrioventricular Node.- Mathematical Models of the Atrioventricular Node in Atrial Fibrillation.- The Model of Cohen et al. (1983).- The Atrioventricular Node as a Biological Oscillator.- The Model of Guevara and Glass (1982).- Resetting the Oscillator.- The Response of a Sine-Wave Oscillator to a Rapid Random Input.- The Effect of a Refractory Period on the Behaviour of the Sine-Wave Model of the Atrioventricular Node.- What Values Should Be Assigned to the Sine-Wave Models Parameters?.- More Electrophysiological Phenomena: lÃé