Functional Effects of Flecainide and Amiodarone: Antiarrhythmic drugs and their effects on heart muscle activity

Flecainide and amiodarone are both important drugs in the treatment of arrhythmias, especially the common atrial fibrillation. Flecainide is generally the first choice for this indication because it has very good conversion rates and low relapse rates in long-term therapy. However, it is contraindicated in people with structural heart disease and severely reduced left ventricular function, which is often the case in this patient group. Amiodarone is valuable in this context as it has no negative effect on cardiac activity. Nevertheless, the direct systolic and diastolic effects of these two drugs are still insufficiently known, which is why they were investigated in this study on atrial human myocardium.