Does the atrioventricular node conduct?

It is difficult to be certain wh en the term "conduction" first applied to the transfer of atrial to the ventricles .' In 1894, Engelmann the word "Leitung", which can be translated as "connection" or as "conduction" .2 In 1906, Tawara the atrioventricular node, which he termed "Das Reizleitungssystem des Herzens ".' The of atrioventricular transmission continued be a subject of considerable debate.4.9 There is summary of the various mechanisms that were to explain atrioventricular transmission in and Cohen's book on the atrioventricular .'o Primarily through the work of Hoffman and and their associates,"12 and to a les ser others,13 14 it became generally accepted that excitation was slowly "conducted" through the node to the His-Purkinje system and ventricular myocardium. Hoffman and Cranefield stated that "the excitable . . . possesses the same electrical properties as a cabie" . 15 Because the "connecting" tissue the atria and the ventric1es was regarded as a of excitable cells, it followed that the atrioventricular was a conduction system. None the , studies of the complicated structure of the atrioventricular junction,14 and the time between recorded action potentials from rabbit atrioventricular nodel6 17 have not as yielded sufficient data to construct a model of the excitation of the atrioventricular node that is to that of the canine and human ventric1es .18 19 The atrioventricular node cannot be mapped the preciseness required to document the of excitation through this part of the conduction system. Although it seems to assume conduction through the atrioventricular , this claim remains open to question conjecture. Moreover, some observations20 sugge that the traditional concept of the atrioventricular as a passive cable with varying properties warrants further examination.