Spiral waves break hearts: Importance of communication between
cardiac cells is demonstrated MONTREAL, CANADA (February 5,
2002)--Who says physicists don't have heart? In an effort to
study the factors that lead to fatal cardiac rhythms, a team of
Canadian researchers has shown that the importance of
communication applies not only to people, but also to their
heart cells. The researchers report their results in this week's
issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. Sudden cardiac
death kills more than 250,000 people each year in the US alone.
Physicists have been studying the important role that
electricity plays in the heart's health--and how it may be a
culprit in disease. Electrical impulses regularly circulate
through cardiac tissue and cause the heart's muscle fibers to
contract. In a healthy heart, these electrical impulses travel
smoothly and unobstructed, like a water wave that ripples gently
in a pond. However, for reasons that have not been perfectly
understood, these waves can sometimes develop