What does V-Fib stand for?

Patients with ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation do better if they undergo catheter ablation before receiving an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, according to a study of 107 patients.

To estimate the effect of a increasing chest compression fraction (CCF)--the proportion of time spent performing chest compressions--during cardiac arrest on survival to hospital discharge, researchers analysed data from CPR tracings in patients who had a ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia cardiac arrest prior to the arrival of the emergency medical services.

Recently published data on 200 patients with life-threatening ventricular fibrillation outside a hospital or other medical setting show no significant difference in survival among those receiving prompt defibrillation versus those having CPR prior to defibrillation.

Garfinkel and his group looked for evidence of this pattern of behavior in cardiac recordings of five patients who suffer from chronic atrial fibrilla- tion, in multi-electrode recordings of electric activity during ventricular fibrillation in the excised, intact heart of a dog, and in maps of electric activity across thin slices of human and canine cardiac tissue in the lab.

Kushnir (1975) studied ten men with myocardial infarction and ventricular fibrillation compared to 70 men with myocardial infarction and no ventricular fibrillation.