title: Surgical management of refractory supraventricular tachycardia in infants and children.
abstract: Sixty-seven children underwent attempted surgical correction of refractory supraventricular arrhythmias using a combination of intraoperative electrophysiologic mapping followed by surgical division or cryoablation of an aberrant conduction pathway or atrial ectopic focus. The patients ranged in age from 4 months to 18 years (mean 11.4 years). Fifty-five patients (82%) had an abnormal conduction pathway crossing the atrioventricular junction (Kent bundle). Thirty-six (65%) of these 55 patients had classic Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome with a delta wave of pre-excitation on the surface electrocardiogram. Nineteen (35%), however, demonstrated only retrograde conduction across the Kent bundle and had a normal surface electrocardiogram when tachycardia was not present. Kent bundles were isolated to the following locations: right anterior or lateral in 19 (34.5%), left posterior or lateral in 22 (40%), posteroseptal in 10 (18%), anteroseptal in 2 (4%) and both right and left in 2 (4%). Follow-up evaluation of as long as 8 years (mean 34.9 months) has shown seven immediate failures and one late recurrence of arrhythmia (14.5%). Recent refinements in technique and the use of cryoablation for septal aberrant pathways have improved these results. There have been two failures (8%) in the last 25 attempts. Twelve patients underwent surgery for an atrial ectopic focus by the following techniques: cryoablation in seven patients, excision in one patient and both excision and cryoablation in four patients. At a mean follow-up of 16.6 months, there was one late recurrence in the group with an atrial ectopic focus.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002315:Cardiopulmonary Bypass; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003452:Cryosurgery / Q000379:methods; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006325:Heart Atria / Q000601:surgery; D006329:Heart Conduction System / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D012008:Recurrence; D013610:Tachycardia / Q000145:classification / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000601:surgery*