Doctor Applies Chaos Theory to Understand Irregular Heartbeats
From Times staff and wire reports
Fibrillation, the seemingly random beating of the heart that often accompanies medical emergencies, is not truly random, but has an underlying order and structure governed by the mathematics of chaos theory, Dr. Alan Garfinkel and his colleagues at UCLA report in the January Journal of Clinical Investigation. One of the key properties that controls fibrillation, they find, is a phenomenon called “restitution,” which governs how the heart recovers from one beat to be ready for the next.
The findings, Garfinkel said, indicate that fibrillation could be treated with drugs rather than the electric shocks now commonly used, and the group has begun clinical trials with a new drug.
