title: Special problems of pacing in children.
abstract: The number of children suffering from congenital or acquired rhythm disorders, and therefore being pacemaker dependent, is very small. This is one of the reasons why a special hardware has never been developed for this cohort. Pacemaker implantation into children does not differ substantially from operations in adults. But there are several important points which have to be fulfilled in these small patients in order to guarantee a complication free function. As most of these children remain pacemaker dependent a lifetime, it is of tremendous importance to minimize all revisions regarding the implanted systems and to enable our small patients a high and therefore nearly normal quality of life. Pros and cons of different surgical approaches, implantation sites and the problem of growth after pacemaker implantation in children are considered.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiac Surgery, University Hospital Innsbruck, The Leopold-Franzens-University Innsbruck, Austria. herwig.antretter@uibk.ac.at
authors.forename: Herwig
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Antretter
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Colvin
authors.forename: Ulli
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schweigmann
authors.forename: Herbert
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hangler
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hofer
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dunst
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Margreiter
authors.forename: Guenther
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Laufer