Life Expectancy in Conductive Disturbances Affecting the Ventricular Complex of the Electrocardiogram

The reader who surveys critically the present day voluminous literature dealing with bundle branch block and allied disturbances does so with an overpowering sense of confusion and with the realization that that the subject is one demanding clarification and simplification. The majority of published investigations deal either with the experimental production of bundle branch defects in animals or with the study of clinical electrocardiograms shuffled into various classifications by various authors. Without doubt the outstanding contribution in the field of disturbances of conduction is the careful and painstaking histopathologic investigations of Yater and his co-workers. 1 In fact, with the exception of certain experimental studies on animals, which obviously are not strictly comparable, their work is the only existent groundwork for the comparison and classification of clinical electrocardiograms. Mahaim's 2 work is also outstanding in this field. Owing to the fact that studies of the conducting system of the heart