Development of Improved Automatic Defibrillator Systems

摘要

Built-in weaknesses of health care systems, as well as the recent favorable experience with transvenous demand pacemakers, have resulted in an approach to the problem of prevention of sudden death by means of an electronic device whose chief purpose is to recognize ventricular fibrillation in a patient in whom it would be implanted, and thereupon to defibrillate his heart automatically. It is expected that this device, an automatic implantable defibrillator (AID), will eventually be adapted for permanent implantation as well as for temporary use in patients particularly prone to develop ventricular fibrillation and thus provide them with some degree of protection from sudden coronary death.