Cardiac Arrhythmia: Mechanisms, Diagnosis, and Management

From the beginning the heart has been considered the center of life.Cardiac Arrhythmiaillustrates this preoccupation with our time clock. The book is directed to a select audience of electrophysiologists, cardiologists, internists, and trainees. It is always exciting to review a first edition. Drs Podrid and Kowey justify the creation of this new book by pointing out "that there are moments in this ever changing field that one has to take a breath, look back, summarize what is known and then put this into perspective." Back in the 1950s, as student at William Einthoven's University of Leiden, I attended a lecture by Dr von Muralt, renowned Swiss electrophysiologist, on the glass microelectrode. With the help of this new tool, his pupils had discovered the importance of regional elevation of extracellular potassium ion concentration in the genesis of proarrhythmias. He compared himself to a chicken that had hatched a nest