For a 53-year-old man in China, the way he lay down could decide whether his heart beat normally. When he lay flat on his back or turned onto his left side, his heart slipped into ventricular tachycardia, a fast and potentially dangerous rhythm from the heart's lower chambers. When he rolled onto his right side, it returned to normal.
Four antiarrhythmic drugs failed to control it. Cardiologists at Qingdao Municipal Hospital eventually traced the rhythm to a small muscular strand inside the heart called the moderator band, and a catheter procedure ended the episodes. The team reported the case in the Journal of Electrocardiology, writing that, to their knowledge, only one similar case had been published before.
