Transthoracic Ventricular Defibrillation in the Dog with Truncated and Untruncated Exponential Stimuli

From 10 560 transthoracic fibrillation-defibrillation episodes in large anesthetized dogs, the effectiveness of 88 types of untruncated and truncated exponential waveforms in reversing ventricular fibrillation was evaluated. The study involved waveforms which could be generated with stored energy levels (in the simple capacitor-switch sense) of 60, 90, 120, and 180 J and initial current levels of 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, and 100 A. The 10-A waveforms were untruncated or truncated at final current values of 5, 7.5, and 9 A. The 20-, 30-, and 40-A waveforms were untruncated or truncated at 5, 10, and 15 A. The 60-, 80-, and l00-A waveforms were untruncated or truncated at the 15-A level.