Like, how does the circuit and the electromagnetic stuff works? Ive always wondered. I couldn’t find reliable info online.
In: Biology
It’s like jumpstarting a car, a heart is a muscle that works with electric impulses. What the defibrillator does is sending a jolt of electricity across the chest (from one paddle to the other) in an attempt to make it start again.
When the heart is fibrillating (a la DE-fibrillator) it is essentially a random occurence of electrical activity in the heart. Normally it is supposed to start at the top, and sweep down to the av node and then through the ventricles.
fortunately for people in fibrillation, when the cell of a heart is depolarized (the electrical signal travels through it) it cannot be depolarized again for a brief period of time.
So if the heart is randomly depolarizing, we can give an electrical impulse that depolarizes all of the hearts cells, hopefully correcting the fibrillation and allowing the automatic cells of the heart to do their job effectively again.
Latest Answers