The role of pacing for arrhythmias will inevitably increase, both temporarily until a patient can be controlled with drug therapy and permanently in those cases in which drug therapy fails. While "ideal" antiarrhythmic drugs will continue to be sought, "ideal" pacing therapies will be developed. Inevitably the average patient with severe arrhythmia will benefit from a synergistic use of both modalities. The methods for capture, techniques to ensure success, standard and advanced pacing sequences, and specific indications will become as much a part of the armamentarium of the front-line clinician controlling the initial potentially lethal episodes as it has for the experienced electrophysiologist.