Diagnostic uses of electrical pacing.
Diagnostic pacing has proven useful for the study of a great variety of clinical problems. Rapid atrial pacing is an excellent means of stressing the heart, particularly in patients with ischemic heart disease. Pacing-induced tachycardia has been used to provoke typical coronary pain and to produce hemodynamic, metabolic, and left ventricular contractile changes in patients with coronary artery disease. Because this heart stress is reproducible, it has also been valuable in assessing response to medical and surgic al therapy in patients with angina. Electrophysiologically, pacing has been used to clarify mechanisms of normal and abnormal function of the sinus node and A-V conduction. The pre-excitation states have been more precisely defined, and the introduction of programmed electrical stimuli into the cardiac cycle has helped elucidate the nature of re-entry supraventricular tachycardias.
D001146:Arrhythmia, Sinus / Q000175:diagnosis; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000175:diagnosis; D004594:Electrophysiology; D006325:Heart Atria; D006329:Heart Conduction System / Q000503:physiopathology; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006349:Heart Valve Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D010138:Pacemaker, Artificial; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D013577:Syndrome; D013610:Tachycardia / Q000175:diagnosis