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A new study finds that there are actually three species of electric eel.
For hundreds of years, scientists had thought there was just one species of Electrophorus, the electric eel, swimming through Amazonian waterways. Turns out, there’s three. And one of the newly described taxa delivers an electric discharge of 860 volts, “making it the strongest living bioelectricity generator,” the authors write in their report, published in Nature Communications today (September 10).
[...] Carl Linnaeus described Electrophorus electricus 250 years ago, and since then it's been the lone species in the genus. Then along comes Carlos David de Santana. As a kid, he watched electric eels swim in the Amazon River, and now as an ichthyologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, he studies its—or rather, their—natural history.
Also at The Atlantic, The Truth About Electric Eels Has Long Been Overlooked.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @04:53PM (1 child)
Actually it's the energy delivered that is far more important than either voltage or current alone. Defibrillators operate at 200-360 Joules depending if the charge is delivered biphasic or monophasic, and for cardioversion as low as 50 J can convert Atrial Flutter to normal rhythm but 150 J is common to cardiovert other arrhythmia. Shocks can last anywhere from .25 to 1.25 seconds. As to uncontrolled shocks, as little as 100 mA can be fatal, above 75 mA (not 750mA which I think was where you might have been going) is danger territory and as little as 30mA can cause respiratory arrest which is just as fatal - the real question is how long is the electricity applied at the current and voltage... again, energy is what matters.
Just because one is shocked does not automatically mean that a dysrhythmia (abnormal rhythm) will occur. (Or rather, after the dysrhythmia of the shock itself, the heart may return itself to a normal sinus rhythm automatically with no further intervention needed). However, even though it is a defibrillator that delivers both kinds of shocks the process would almost certainly be a cardioversion and not a defibrilation*. One might avert shock altogether with the use of digoxin, lidocaine, or amiodarone.
*The difference is that a cardioversion shocks, very synchronized, on the peak of the conduction wave (the big spike pointed upward in movies), and it's important that it does shock when the maximum electrical potential has been delivered. A defibillation shocks immediately because the two defibrillation is used - Ventricular Tachycardia and Ventricular Fibrillation there is no synchronizable R wave in the rhythm. While I'm at it, let's debunk the movie myth that because one is flatlined one should be shocked... a flatline (asystole) is not a shockable rhythm and contrary to every movie you've seen a flatline is never shocked, only VFib and pulseless VTach are shockable, and either are usually the last thing you see on the monitor before flatline if the patient isn't having a sudden cardiac death.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @09:43PM