“…The intrinsic cardiac nervous system influences cardiac rate, atrial and ventricular refractoriness, coronary blood flow, valvular function, and atrial natriuretic peptide secretion, and appears to be involved in the development of risky disorders of the human heart (Neely and Urthaler, 1992; Gulbenkian et al, 1993; Oki et al, 1994; Bernardi et al, 1994; van de Borne et al, 1994; Ehlert et al, 1994; Zabel et al, 1994; Esler et al, 1995; Baumgart and Heusch, 1995; Schuessler et al, 1996; Zucker, 1996; Chiou and Zipes, 1998; Beaulieu and Lambert, 1998; Stevens et al, 1998; Wen et al, 1998; Armour, 1999). Intrinsic neural pathways appear to be important in radiofrequency ablation of both supraventricular and atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia because preganglionic and postganglionic nerve fibers disrupted in this way may be the determinant in occurrence of serious postsurgery complications, including complete atrioventricular block, ventricular fibrilation, and sudden death (Kocovic et al, 1993; Strickberger et al, 1996; Gaita et al, 1998; Psychari et al, 1998; Jinbo et al, 1998; Uchida et al, 1998). In human cardiac transplantation, the role of intracardiac nerves in the improvement of exercise capacity after transplantation and the development of coronary artery disease and arrhythmias is also considerable since heart transplantation failures may be chiefly associated both with cardiac denervation and reinnervation after cardiac transplantation (Mason et al, 1976; Fallen et al, 1988; Bernardi et al, 1994; Ramaekers et al, 1996; Constant et al, 1995; Armour, 1999; Bengel et al, 1999).…”