Electrical Stimulation and Electropathology

Human response to short-term electrical exposure can be beneficial, as in the application of electrical stimulation for medical purposes, or pathological, as in unintended electric shock. This book is the first to offer a cohesive treatment of the subject, covering fundamental principles, specific human responses, and electrical safety. The book begins with a description of fundamental bioelectric principles. Subsequent chapters treat human reactions to electrical stimulation according to the nature of the response - sensory reactions, cardiac reactions, muscle reactions, electric and magnetic field exposure, and high-voltage and high-current injuries. The last chapter discusses standards and protective measures in consumer products. The author is a member of the principal professional staff at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. To supplement his own chapters, he has invited specialists to contribute chapters in their fields of expertise: Hermann Antoni, University of Freiburg, on electrical properties of the heart; James Sweeney, University of Arizona, on skeletal muscle responses; Michael Chilbert, Medical College of Wisconsin, on high-voltage and high-current injuries; and Walter Skuggevig, Underwriters Laboratories, on standards and protective measures. Sifting through a vast body of engineering and biomedical literature, Reilly has provided a unique reference that will interest researchers, designers, and regulatory personnel.

'… will no doubt become the standard text on the effects of short-term electrical exposures, both intended and accidental.' Micro Wave News, 'The book is well written and easy to read. It contains excellent medical illustrations, and the author does an exceptional job in annotating equations, tables, figures, and graphs, and relating their significance to the physical systems under discussion. … an excellent reference which will be particularly useful to the engineer, medical scientist, or health professional working with electrical medical devices. Also, this book will make a good secondary classroom text for most graduate and undergraduate bioinstrumentation courses.' William Nau, Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 'The contents in this book are well organized into clearly-defined chapters, and within the chapters, the text and visual elements are presented in a way that they are easy to browse through, as well as read in depth. This is an excellent work on a relatively new subject.' Nano Khilnani, Biz India Online News (www.bizindia.net)