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(Circulation. 2004;110:e453.)
© 2004 American Heart Association, Inc.

Book Review

Cardiac Electrophysiology: From Cell to Bedside, Fourth Edition

Hein J. Wellens, MD

Cardiovascular Research Institute, Maastricht, The Netherlands

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Douglas P. Zipes, Jose Jalife, eds.
1115 pp. Philadelphia, Pa: W.B. Saunders; 2004. $259.00; ISBN 0721603238

This is the fourth edition of a book that has become the reference source for advanced cardiac electrophysiology. The first edition was published in 1990 with the intention of bridging the gap between investigators of basic cardiac electrophysiology and clinicians treating cardiac arrhythmias. At that time, the book had 109 chapters, 221 authors, and 1034 pages. The current edition has 120 chapters, 245 authors, and 1144 pages. It is interesting to note that only 48 (22%) of the authors from the first edition survived to the fourth (I am one of the 78% who did not). This illustrates that in cardiology not only does 50% of our knowledge change every 5 years but so do the people involved in these changes.

I could not resist looking over all 4 editions at once because this so beautifully illustrates what has happened during the last 15 years in cardiac electrophysiology. In general, I noticed a trend toward including more basic and less practical clinical information. For example, although conduction disturbances and tachyarrhythmias are discussed in many of the chapters, it is hard to find 12-lead ECGs of clinical arrhythmias. Most of the information and illustrations concern advanced intracardiac mapping and stimulation techniques and complex catheter ablative procedures. Apparently the editors decided that our young colleagues should obtain knowledge of the characteristics of cardiac arrhythmias on the surface ECG elsewhere. Perhaps they felt that not much new . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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