“…Although experimental evidence has, for a century, suggested that the CNS has a role in cardiac dysrhythmias 128, 1351, the relevance of these experimental data to the clinical situation was first emphasized by Parizel in 1973 [llO]. His observations of supraventricular tachycardia, ectopic ventricular contractions, multifocal ventricular tachycardias, ventricular flutter, and ventricular fibrillation in subjects with subarachnoid hemorrhage [l 101 have been confirmed [25,35,40,49,111,1591 and extended to subjects with head injuries [60], cerebral ischemia [GO], and cerebral tumors [58], as well as those who have undergone neurosurgical procedures [58J The cardiac dysrhythmias in these conditions could occur with or without electrocardiographic signs of myocardial damage. Even though neural influences may generate the cardiac dysrhythmias, it is possible that the rhythm disturbances may be secondary to incipient cardiac damage caused by the neural influences.…”