Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Williamsburg.VA Permit No. 26 Visit our Website http://www.wm.edu/wmnews/wm_news.html E-mail:
[email protected] VOLUME XXIX, NUMBER 17 NeWSA Newspaper for Faculty, Staff and Students I THURSDAY, MAY I 1,2000 Where the Heart Is Zobin hopes math can help prevent heart attacks Associate Professor of Mathematics methods are also costly and painful—the pa¬ Nahum Zobin has heartening news: tient endures numerous artificially induced his research may one day help doc¬ heart attacks during the procedure. tors treat patients with ventricular tachycar¬ Zobin's mathematical model, which pro¬ dia, a critical heart condition affecting poses how the measurement of a patient's 200,000 Americans and a major cause of magnetic field can enable doctors to locate heart attacks. damaged tissue, began when he was a fellow In ventricular tachycardia, faulty heart at Israel's University of Haifa in the early tissue creates the so-called re-entry pathways, 1990s. The project's research group has since which lead to a rapid increase of the heart disbanded, but Zobin continues the work. rate and reduce blood flow through the "The model survived a lot of difficult heart, causing a heart attack. Since the same criticism from medical doctors," he said. biological problem occurs in epilepsy, when "Now there remains a lot of expertmenting faulty brain tissues lead to a propagation of and a lot of engineering." signals that cause seizures, Zobin's find¬ While the mathematical ings may eventually contribute to epi model is complete, Zobin lepsy research as well.