Cardiac Risk Assessment: When and Who?

Abstract

Cardiac fibrillation, both ventricular and atrial, should perhaps be considered as probabilistic phenomena that can be biased according to the pathophysiological condition of the subject. Attempts in this direction have so far been few and vague, and models based on chaos theory, up to now, have been disappointing, even though, at one point in time, the theory sounded appealing, and many papers were produced. In this paper, it has been described the relatively recent historical development of different techniques for cardiac risk assessment, which started with serious quantitative steps in the middle of the 20th century, not more than 50 or 60 years ago, and is part of a much more complex effort aimed at health risk assessment.