"A lot of individuals who have heart disease and have defibrillators, pacemakers, there's a significant psychological burden to wondering, 'Is today the day?' … The [fatal] arrhythmia, sadly, is a once in a lifetime event, so it'd be nice to just give patients the understanding that today is going to be a good day."

Your heart will beat billions of times if you live a typical lifespan with incredible reliability, but a handful of abnormal beats could be fatal. Steve Poelzing, a groundbreaking cardiovascular scientist, divulges the complex mechanism behind a single heartbeat, how it can go awry, and what his research is discovering about identifying conditions that can disrupt healthy heart rhythms in order to head off fatal arrythmias.

More about Steven Poelzing

Poelzing is a professor and associate director of faculty affairs at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. He studies the processes of electrical activity between heart muscle cells, the proteins that connect them, and how mutations are linked to sudden cardiac death, as well as diseases such as heart failure, ischemia, and diabetes. Poelzing's research has demonstrated that the spread of electricity across the heart, which makes it beat, is conducted not only by proteins, but also electrical fields between heart muscle cells. 

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About Pocket Science

Pocket Science is a compact guide to the human body and how it works, powered by the world-class scientists of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. We ask fundamental questions about the human body, health, and disease, and get answers from research institute experts, who also tell us how their research illuminates these systems and how to better treat the diseases that affect them.

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