Oita International Electrocardiology Symposium 2000 “Electrophysiology and Management of Lethal Arrhythmias in the New Millennium: From Genes to Bedside”

“Life must be lived forward, butunderstood backward.” KierkegaardFor the pat 50 years, I have been an active witness to the scientific developments defining our knowledge of cardiac arrhythmias. This era spans a time period from the formulation of ionic theory of membrane excitation by Hodgkin and Huxley (Nobel prize, 1963) to the understanding of the relation between structure and function of single channels (Nobel prize to Neher and Sakmann, 1991) . From practical point of view, I would like to break down my presentation into 3 parts, the first dealing with successes, the second with failures, and the third, a brief venture into future promises.