Jonathan Steinberg is currently the Chief of the Division of Cardiologyat St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in NY. He has served as the Director of the Electrophysiology Laboratory at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ and as Co-Director of The Heart Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in NY.

Sally Simon asks:
I am interested in seeing if you notice manifestations of "everyday" stress in the defibrillator reports? I refer to things such as a stressful day at work with deadlines or being involved in an automobile accident or wondering where money for your bills will come from etc… If there is an indication of these stresses how do they compare to more catastrophic stressful incidents.

Steinberg's response:
Catastrophic stress events are more likely to evoke physiologic and pathophysiologic responses. It is conceivable that everyday stresses, can have a detrimental effect on cardiovascular function but this has proven difficult to prove.

Chris asks:
Do you see a similar spike in the number of arrhythmias when people THINK about stressful events as opposed to actually experiencing the stressful event itself. It seems that many people suffered horribly from the effects of September 11th and I was wondering of you were seeing any correlation in patients that are suffering from thinking about it as opposed to those who were direct witness to the tragedy.

Steinberg's response:
Our study of defibrillator patients involved primarily patients who did not directly witness the World Trade Center attack. Thus, they fit with the model that you describe. They thought deeply about the terrorist attack and "witnessed" them only via media coverage and television viewing.

Susan Standifer asks:
Where do you see this research going? Have you considered marketing some device that people can wear that indicate when our physiological responses are working overtime to deal with our stress. Do you think this is a viable idea? Do you have any ideas about how one might go about making and marketing something like this?

Thanks, Susan

Steinberg's response:
Our research primarily focuses on preventing serious health consequences from mental stress and stressful events. It would difficult to measure physiologic responses that identify stress and I could not begin to hazard a guess about how such a device could be constructed or marketed.