ABSTRACT
Atrial fi brillation (AF) and ventricular tachycardia (VT)/fi brillation (VF) are important causes of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. To determine the pathophysiology of these disorders and to design clinical trials evaluating pharmacologic therapies and procedural interventions, the use of biological markers (biomarkers) is of increasing importance. A biomarker represents a normal biological or pathogenic process, or pharmacologic response to an intervention. Biomarkers are very important because they can be used in research studies as surrogate endpoints to enable more rapid performance of clinical studies, predict disease risk, monitor disease status, and evaluate the effi cacy of implemented therapeutic strategies (Mountantonakis and Deo 2012). This chapter highlights important clinical and translational studies that investigate the role of potential biomarkers to predict the onset of cardiac arrhythmias and their complications.
