Excitable cells
(jenevoldsen.com)
I wrote this post to answer some of the questions, I had as a medical student, when I first learned about cardiac arrhythmias. Mainly, what are the conditions required to initiate and maintain a reentrant arrhythmia? That is, a state where the heart muscles are continuously activated by a self-sustaining loop, independent of the normal pace-making system. These arrhythmias can be benign, as with AV-nodal reentry tachycardia (AVNRT); a common, and usually harmless, cause of palpitations in young people.
I wrote this post to answer some of the questions, I had as a medical student, when I first learned about cardiac arrhythmias. Mainly, what are the conditions required to initiate and maintain a reentrant arrhythmia? That is, a state where the heart muscles are continuously activated by a self-sustaining loop, independent of the normal pace-making system. These arrhythmias can be benign, as with AV-nodal reentry tachycardia (AVNRT); a common, and usually harmless, cause of palpitations in young people.