An emergency medical procedure that delivers an electrical shock to the heart to restore normal rhythm during life-threatening arrhythmias like ventricular fibrillation. The shock stops chaotic electrical activity, allowing the heart's natural pacemaker to resume control.
From Latin 'de-' (reverse or undo) and 'fibrillation' (from 'fibrilla,' meaning small fiber), referring to the chaotic, fiber-like quivering of heart muscle. The technique was developed in the 1940s based on earlier experiments with electrical stimulation of the heart.
Defibrillation literally brings people back from the dead by shocking a quivering, useless heart back into organized rhythm - it's the closest thing we have to resurrection in medicine! The heart's electrical system is so precisely coordinated that when it goes chaotic, only a massive electrical reset can restore the life-sustaining rhythm that pumps blood to your brain.
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