Temporary Cardiac Pacing

Inventor Paul Zoll of Zoll fame first attempted temporary cardiac pacing in the 1950s. After several animal experiments with their new external electrical pulse generator, they thought they would give it a go on humans. So things are moving in the right direction towards where we are today with our sort of self-adhesive pacing pads. And then you look to see whether a QRS complex is generated by each thump that you're delivering. It's quick to set up, relatively well tolerated and painful but fortunately this can be assisted with pharmacology as we'll come on to discuss in a bit.