Adhesive Defibrillator Pad Cable

I slipped back into a fib over the weekend and had my rhythm corrected by cardioversion in the emergency room – not an emergency, but my doctor says it's best to get zapped ASAP.

Being the pack rat I am, I kept the adhesive defibrillator pads. The wire on them is strange. It appears to be fine carbon fiber. About 2" was stripped, fanned out, and held against the conductive pad with an adhesive backing. It seems like a strange arrangement, maybe to keep the pad as smooth as possible to prevent burning the skin.

The resistance of the cable is about 1 ohm/ft.





This picture shows the carbon fiber.




This picture shows how the cable was fanned out.

For The Popcorn said:

I slipped back into a fib over the weekend and had my rhythm corrected by cardioversion in the emergency room – not an emergency, but my doctor says it's best to get zapped ASAP.

Click to expand...

I know a couple of people with internal de-fibs, Peter who I attend cardiac exercise classes with - his has NEVER gone off, and he's had it for years, it's combined with his pacemaker, and he's had multiple replacements (or batteries, whatever they do?). The other one lives opposite me, and apparently his goes off every couple of weeks - I've never seen it happen, but from what I've heard he starts to collapse and then suddenly 'reboots'

I had severe atrial fibrillation, so while they had me opened up they corrected that surgically, and it seems to have worked OK.
Have they ever suggested catheter ablation?, or aren't you that bad yet?.

I never had the opportunity to get any pads, as far as I know I was never de-fibbed, but I was covered in ECG contacts. Following my heart attack the ambulance crew stuck a set on, then once in A&E they stuck another set on, then when I was moved to a ward they stuck a third set on - no one removed the previous sets, and no one used them again

I had an ablation, which lasted for 18 months before going out of rhythm. Put back into rhythm with a cardioversion, with a second ablation following that. A sneak path was found, and I believed that solved the problem.

Which it did for 7 months. Sunday my smart watch had a fit when it detected a fib. My history is that I never revert to normal rhythm without intervention.