Development of the multifunctional cardiac electric stimulator for the investigation of the defibrillation efficiency

Abstract

Strong energy stimulation is most effective method for the treatment of heart paralyzation (also called fibrillation), which is the main cause of sudden cardiac death. Automatic implantable defibrillator is available for the treatment of this arrhythmia. However, since the mechanism of termination of fibrillation by the electrical stimulation is not well understood, currently available automatic implantable defibrillator has many problems such as large size, heavy weight, short battery life and so on. The development of low energy defibrillation method is ideal for the improvement of current system. The purpose of this study is the development of multifunctional strong energy heart electric stimulator which is of help investigating the improvement of low energy defibrillation method. In this stimulator, number of stimulus, waveform shape such as monophasic and biphasic waveform, each subpart waveform duration, interphasic duration and output energy can be controlled. In the animal experiment using this stimulator, defibrillation energy requirement using biphasic waveform stimulation was less than50%of that using monophasic waveform stimulation.