ISSUE @ A GLANCE Arrhythmias and device therapy

Arrhythmias are an important cause of symptoms, stroke, syncope, and sudden death among cardiovascular patients. Often such events come as a surprise to both physicians and patients. Thus, the preven-tion of arrhythmic events has become an important part of cardiovas-cular prevention using both drugs and devices. To help physicians in their clinical practice, the European Society of Cardiology in collabor-ationwith the EuropeanHeart Journal has published a series of practice guidelines on this subject such as, for instance, those on cardiac pacing and cardiac resynchronization therapy1 or on the management of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF).2 Many papers on cardiac arrhythmias have been published in this journal and the scientific literature at large. The most important of these published in the past year are summarized elegantly in The year in cardiology 2014: arrhythmias and device therapy by Hein Heidbuchel and Gerhard Hindricks from Hasselt, Belgiu