Defibrillation devices can still save lives using 1,000 times less electricity, optimized model finds

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In a paper published in Chaos, researchers from Sergio Arboleda University in Bogotá, Colombia, and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta used an electrophysiological computer model of the heart's electrical circuits to examine the effect of the applied voltage field in multiple fibrillation-defibrillation scenarios. They discovered far less energy is needed than is currently used in state-of-the-art defibrillation techniques.

"The results were not at all what we expected. We learned the mechanism for ultra-low-energy defibrillation is not related to synchronization of the excitation waves like we thought, but is instead related to whether the waves manage to propagate across regions of the tissue which have not had the time to fully recover from a previous excitation," author Roman Grigoriev said.

"Our focus was on finding the optimal variation in time of the applied electric field over an extended time interval. Since the length of the time interval is not known a priori, it was incremented until a defibrillating protocol was found."

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