Lighting the Heart

摘要

Cardiac arrhythmia-a wildly irregular heartbeat-can kill a person in minutes. Implantable defibrillators can provide lifesaving electrical jolts to the heart, but these shocks can be painful. Now, research teams in Germany and the United States have developed a potentially gentler method of stimulating a regular heartbeat: a pulse of light (J. Clin. Invest., doi:10.1172/ JCI88950).