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Cardiac Pacing in Sick Sinus Syndrome

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To Pace or not to Pace

Abstract

In a premier essay on ventricular fibrillation published in 1887, the famous physiologist John Mc.William (1) wrote:

“It may, in any case, be safely affirmed that the spontaneous contraction in the mammalian heart arises in the terminal (or ostial) portions of the great veins either exactly at their junction with the auricles, or in the walls of the veins at some little distance from the actual junction.” In 1907 Keith and Flack (2), a medical student at that time, identified an aggregate of cells at the sino-atrial location exactly where Mc.William had predicted that the master pacemaker of the heart resided. They called it “the Primum mobile,” the sino-atrial node (SAN) or pacemaker of the heart located at the antero-lateral junction of the superior vena cava with the base of the right atrial appendage.

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Authors
  1. Hilbert J. Th. Thalen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cardiology, University Hospital, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Hilbert J. Th. Thalen M.D.

  2. Cardiac Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA

    J. Warren Harthorne M.D.

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© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers by, The Hague

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Thalen, H.J.T. (1978). Cardiac Pacing in Sick Sinus Syndrome. In: Thalen, H.J.T., Harthorne, J.W. (eds) To Pace or not to Pace. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9723-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9723-3_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-009-9725-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9723-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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