John A. Kastor. 448 pages. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders; 1994. $85.00.
Dr. Kastor is the Theodore Woodward Professor of Medicine and Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of Maryland. He justifies another book on cardiac arrhythmias by saying that it "is a contemporary, comprehensive book. specifically written for clinicians who are not now nor plan to become clinical electrophysiologists." Dr. Kastor expresses concern that in some emergency rooms, patients with arrhythmia have only their electrocardiogram, or, increasingly, their electrophysiology laboratory data, recorded and perused without much history or physical examination.
The first chapter, written by Bruce Fye, is a wonderful history of cardiac arrhythmias from the time that Dutch physician Karel Wenckebach announced that future studies of "the irregularities of the heart" would be based on physiology to the current era when Paul Zoll and his colleagues reported the use of countershock to terminate ventricular fibrillation. The Editor wrote the chapter on atrial fibrillation, the longest in the book, which includes more than 1200 references. He also wrote the chapter on atrioventricular block, which has more than 800 references. The bibliographies of the other 18 authors were more restrained. Each chapter concludes with a brief summary; many representative cardiograms are included.
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