Cardiac defibrillator, implantable
Cardiac defibrillator, implantable: A device that is designed to be put in the body to recognize certain types of abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias) and correct them by delivering precisely calibrated and timed electrical shocks to restore a normal heartbeat. Defibrillators continuously monitor the heart rhythm in order to detect overly rapid life-threatening arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachycardia (rapid regular beating of the ventricles, the bottom chambers of the heart) or ventricular fibrillation (rapid irregular beating of the ventricles). Today’s implantable defibrillators can be implanted with less invasive surgical techniques than in the past.
Read Also:
- Cardiac index
Cardiac index: A cardiodynamic measure based on the cardiac output, which is the amount of blood the left ventricle ejects into the systemic circulation in one minute, measured in liters per minute (l/min). Cardiac output is indexed to a patient’s body size by dividing by the body surface area to yield the cardiac index.
- Cardiac myocyte
Cardiac myocyte: A heart muscle cell. Sometimes called a myocyte when it is understood that it is in the heart. See also: Myocyte.
- Cardiac muscle
Cardiac muscle: A type of muscle tissue that is found only in the heart and is distinguishable from the two other forms of muscle, smooth muscle (that moves internal organs, such as the bowels, and vessels, such as the artery walls) and skeletal muscle (that powers joints). Cardiac muscle is responsible for pumping blood throughout […]
- Cardiac myxoma
Cardiac myxoma: A benign tumor of the heart and the most common type of heart tumor in adults. Cardiac myxomas can appear in an isolated case or in families, sometimes as part of an hereditary syndrome called the Carney complex. Some families have the Carney complex variant as well as the trismus-pseudocamptodactyly syndrome (Hecht syndrome). […]
- Cardiac output
Cardiac output: The amount of blood the heart pumps through the circulatory system in a minute. The amount of blood put out by the left ventricle of the heart in one contraction is called the stroke volume. The stroke volume and the heart rate determine the cardiac output. A normal adult has a cardiac output […]