Concepts of ventricular defibrillation

Despite its critical role in restoring cardiac rhythm and thus, in saving h uman life, cardiac defibrillation remains poorly understood. For a defibril lation shock to be successful, the shock must extinguish existing activatio n fronts throughout the myocardium without initiating new re-entrant activa tions. The goal of this paper is to examine the current theories for defibr illation and re-entry induction, the new breakthroughs in the field, and th e emerging new hypotheses.