William Eysenck

King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Background Leadless pacemakers present a viable alternative to conventional transvenous devices to mitigate the risk of lead and/or pocket related complications. In elderly patients who have encountered ventricular lead failures with transvenous pacemakers, this option may enable the delivery of atrio-ventricular synchronous pacing therapy whilst o...

We present the case of an 81-year-old woman with a background of situs inversus with dextrocardia who was successfully treated for tachycardia-bradycardia syndrome with left bundle area pacing. This report describes how this approach can circumvent the limitations of other pacing approaches to optimize patient outcomes. (Level of Difficulty: Interm...

Introduction: There is limited data using continuous monitoring to assess outcomes of atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. This study assessed long-term outcomes of AF ablation in patients with implantable cardiac devices. Methods: 207 patients (mean age 68.1 ± 9.5, 50.3% men) undergoing ablation for symptomatic AF were followed up for a mean period...

AF and heart failure (HF) commonly coexist. Left atrial ablation is an effective treatment to maintain sinus rhythm (SR) in patients with AF. Recent evidence suggests that the use of ablation for AF in patients with HF is associated with an improved left ventricular ejection fraction and lower death and HF hospitalisation rates. We performed a syst...

Purpose Several external cardiac monitors (ECMs) have recently been developed. These have never been compared to ‘gold standard’ monitoring with concurrently implanted DDDRP pacemakers. The accuracy of AF detection of Zio XT Monitor (ZM), NUUBO Vest (NV) and Carnation Ambulatory Monitor (CAM) compared with Novacor ‘R’ Test 4 (RT) in patients (pts)...

Objective: To investigate the accuracy of 3 non-invasive blood pressure (BP) devices in atrial fibrillation (AF) compared with invasive arterial BP. Methods: One hundred patients aged 45 to 90 years, 63% male (50 in AF and 50 age matched controls in sinus rhythm (SR)) were identified with arterial lines measuring beat-to-beat BP fluctuation. Non...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the accuracy of three non‐invasive blood pressure (BP) devices in atrial fibrillation (AF) compared with invasive arterial BP. METHODS: One hundred patients aged 45‐90 years, 63% male (50 in AF and 50 age matched controls in sinus rhythm [SR]) were identified with arterial lines measuring beat‐to‐beat BP fluctuation. Non‐i...

A central iliac arteriovenous anastomosis, termed the “coupler” (ROX Medical), results in a significant reduction in blood pressure (BP) in hypertensive patients. This study assessed functional and hemodynamic changes induced by the device. Twenty‐one patients with resistant and/or uncontrolled hypertension underwent stress echocardiography and car...

Background Sleep‐disordered breathing (SDB) and atrial fibrillation (AF) are associated. This study investigated the impact of AF intervention on 6 month home sleep testing data. Methods Sixty‐seven patients (aged 66 to 86, 53% male) with persistent AF were randomized (1:1:1) to direct current cardioversion (DCCV) (22 patients), permanent pacemake...

Background: Right Ventricular Septal (RVS) pacing is often recommended as a more physiological alternative to Right Ventricular Apical (RVA) pacing. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the long-term outcomes in patients persistently paced following Atrioventricular Node (AVN) ablation. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 200 pa...

A central iliac arteriovenous anastomosis, the ‘coupler’ (ROX Medical, California, USA) results in a significant reduction in blood pressure in hypertensive patients. This study assessed the change in AF burden following coupler implantation in patients with paroxysmal AF (PAF) and hypertension. Good blood pressure control using the coupler results...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with a multitude of adverse outcomes. The arrhythmia is associated with increased risk for stroke and heart failure (HF), reduced quality of life and increased shortness of breath. In addition, previous research has found a high prevalence of AF in patients with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and the two con...

Introduction Blood pressure (BP) is routinely measured by the automated sphygmomanometer. Accurate assessment of BP in patients (pts) with atrial fibrillation (AF) is crucial but impossible due to beat-to-beat variability of stroke volume and significant BP fluctuation preventing consistent assessment of Korotkoff sounds. The PulseCor R6.5 (PC) det...

Introduction A central stent derived arterio-venous iliac fistula using the ROX Coupler reduces blood pressure (BP) in patients (pts) with resistant and/or uncontrolled hypertension (HTN). We performed detailed stress echocardiograms (echos) during concurrent cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) pre and post insertion of a ROX Coupler for HTN. W...

Introduction Right ventricular septal (RVS) pacing is often recommended as a more physiological alternative to right ventricular apical (RVA) pacing. Most comparisons between the two sites have had short follow up and few trials have assessed the different pacing sites following atrioventricular node (AVN) ablation. We analysed 200 consecutive pati...

Introduction Epidemiological data have demonstrated an independent association between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and atrial fibrillation (AF). We have developed an efficient and reliable screening service investigating SDB in patients (pts)>65 years with persistent AF. Polysomnography (PSG) in a sleep laboratory (lab) is the gold standard di...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained arrhythmia, with a prevalence of approximately 1.60% in the United Kingdom [1]. AF is associated with increased rates of death, stroke and other thromboembolic events, heart failure and hospitalisations, degraded quality of life, reduced exercise capacity, and left ventricular dysfunction [1-3]....

The ROX Coupler is a device that allows creation of a central arteriovenous anastomosis at the iliac level. The device has been shown to improve exercise capacity in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and is CE marked for the treatment of resistant and uncontrolled hypertension. Reflex syncope is a challenging clinical condition wi...

In his theory of anxiety disorders, Eysenck (1997) argued that focus on one's own behavior is associated with social phobia, whereas focus on future-oriented threat cognitions is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder. These foci occur in part because social phobics tend to be introverted and obsessive-compulsives either perceive themselves...

Cross-cultural information about national IQ, national personality, and longevity was obtained. Longevity was positively associated with neuroticism and national IQ and negatively associated with conscientiousness and agreeableness. The negative effects were mediated by income inequality: low conscientiousness and agreeableness were associated with...