Rafel El-Atassi

Cardiology is a branch of medicine that deals with the disorders of the heart as well as some parts of the cardiovascular system. The field includes medical diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease and electrophysiology. Physicians who specialize in this field of medicine are called cardiologists, a specialty of internal medicine. Pediatric cardiologists are pediatricians who specialize in cardiology. Physicians who specialize in cardiac surgery are called cardiothoracic surgeons or cardiac surgeons, a specialty of general surgery.

Cardiac electrophysiology is the science of elucidating, diagnosing, and treating the electrical activities of the heart. The term is usually used in a clinical context to describe studies of such phenomena by invasive (intracardiac) catheter recording of spontaneous activity as well as of cardiac responses to programmed electrical stimulation (PES), see Clinical cardiac electrophysiology. Cardiac electrophysiology also encompasses basic research and translational research components. Someone who studies cardiac electrophysiology, either clinically or solely through research, is known as a cardiac electrophysiologist.