Adams–Stokes syndrome

As Adams -Stokes syndrome (also: Morgagni -Adams -Stokes attack or shortly MAS attack ) refers to a state short of consciousness, by a paroxysmally occurring short cardiac arrest ( asystole ) due to sinus arrest, SA - blocking or AV block caused will.

Description

The attack is named after the Dublin medical Robert Adams (1791-1875) and William Stokes (1804-1878); the syndromes of Giovanni Battista Morgagni were first described in the year in 1761.

The states are mostly characterized in that the persons concerned are unconscious of total well -being out without warning ( prodromal symptoms ) and become very often hurt by a fall. Patients can suffer a seizure because of the asystole and subsequent hypoxia. After a short time, when the rhythm again " get going", the person wakes just as suddenly back on and only for the moment of loss of consciousness, a memory lapse ( Kongrade amnesia). The diagnosis is made on the ECG, but it is sometimes very difficult to impossible to detect such conditions, if the patient is not just, for example, wearing a Holter storage device at the moment of the attack. However, one can after implantation of an event recorder or a pacemaker (see below) to read such events later from memory. Pacemakers and other modern implants ( implantable cardioverter defibrillators ) store the derived signals all heartbeats durable and can confirm the diagnosis in retrospect; an event recorder is an implanted Holter ECG device in principle.

The causes of stroke are located in an arteriosclerotic or inflammatory damage to the conduction system of the heart. It is also conceivable a heart attack. The heart muscle is damaged so that the normal electrical impulses that regulate the heart's rhythm, not be forwarded from the atria into the ventricles. As a result sets from the heart, to the heart chambers have developed our own escape rhythm.

The treatment of Stokes-Adams attacks is usually the implantation of a permanent pacemaker, unless other remediable causes ( eg drugs such as digitalis or beta-blockers ) are responsible for the discomfort. The implantation is often clearly indicated, because the attack is a survived sudden cardiac death. Thus, the patient must be closely monitored between the event and implantation.