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Patient
57-year-old woman without cardiovascular history, hospitalized for repeated severe syncope in the past two weeks; continuous ECG tracing recording; recording during a syncopal episode;
Trace
Sinus rhythm, borderline PR-interval; ventricular extrasystole triggering a very rapid, irregular, polymorphous ventricular tachycardia, with spontaneous termination after about fifteen complexes; resumption of sinus rhythm; this short episode was responsible for a lightheadedness;
Trace
Tracing recorded a few seconds after the first tracing; identical ventricular extrasystole (originating from the base of the left ventricle), sllghtly early, causing the rhythm to degenerate into a very rapid, irregular polymorphic tachycardia corresponding to a coarse ventricular fibrillation;
Trace
End of the episode; the fibrillation resolves spontaneously after fifteen seconds;
Exergue
Ventricular fibrillation corresponds to a completely disorganized, chaotic and unsynchronized ventricular electric activity reflected on the ECG by a totally irregular high-rate succession of signals of variable duration and amplitude among which one can no longer recognize P waves, QRS complexes or T waves.
Ventricular fibrillation constitutes of ventricular electrical activity that is completely disorganized, chaotic and unsynchronized, with disappearance of the alternation between systoles and electrical diastoles replaced by weak and rapid movements of the ventricular wall totally devoid of hemod