Albany Medical Annals Volume 37 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...and auricular fibrillation may last hours in dogs, and yet the blood flow is fair throughout. Definition.--Auricular fibrillation may be defined as that form of abnormal rhythm or arrhythmia, in which the normal sinus rhythm is replaced by innumerable stimuli, excited by multiple irritable foci throughout the right auricle; the auricle early losing its normal co-ordinate contraction as a whole or in part, and rapidly becomes ballooned or over-distended in an extreme diastolic position. The only auricular activity remaining being multiple individual muscle fibre contractions, which cause a general and continuous fibrillation or tremor, fine or coarse, of the musculature of the auricles, resembling closely the tremor often observed in the tongue, or facial muscles of patients suffering from chronic bulbar paralysis, or in the skeletal muscles of cases of progressive spinal muscular atrophy. The ventricular contractions remain co-ordinate, but their rhythm becomes extremely irregular owing to irritation from showers of stimuli passing from the auricle over the bundle of Kent-His. It is in response to these numerous and bizarre stimuli that the perpetual attacks of irregularity of both the arterial and venous pulses are due. The recognition clinically of auricular fibrillation was a most brilliant achievement, and it is but another example of the great service which physiological experimentation has rendered to clinical medicine. This form of arrhythmia, while perhaps the Pathology. From a pathological standpoint it is interesting to know that auricular fibrillation is commonly associated with valvular diseases, especially mitral stenosis, myocardial degeneration, enlargement of the whole heart, cardiac dilation and dilatation, with or without hypertrophy of th...