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Surgery for Atrial Tachycardia
Author(s) -
GUIRAUDON GERARD M.,
KLEIN GEORGE J.,
YEE RAYMOND,
LEITCH JAMES W.,
KAUSHIK RAJ R.,
McLELLAN DOUGLAS G.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
pacing and clinical electrophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.686
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1540-8159
pISSN - 0147-8389
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-8159.1990.tb06930.x
Subject(s) - medicine , atrial flutter , atrial fibrillation , cardiology , atrial tachycardia , tachycardia , cryoablation , sinus (botany) , atrioventricular node , perioperative , surgery , catheter ablation , ablation , botany , biology , genus
GUIRAUDON, G.M., ET AL.: Surgery for Atrial Tachycardia. Atrial flutter is associated with a macro‐reentrant loop including an area of slow conduction cryoablation of which prevents atrial flutter to occur. Three patients underwent such intervention. Atrial fibrillation is associated with multiple reentrant circuits (leading circle of Allessie) that requires a critical surface area to perpetuate. We have designed an operation, the corridor operation, which isolate the sinus node and the AV node within a small segment of atrial tissue, to restore the chronotropic function of the sinus node. Nine patients underwent the corridor operation at our institution. There were eight men and one woman. Five had incessant atrial fibrillation and four paroxysmal. One patient had associated mitral valve stenosis and one cardiomyopathy. There were no perioperative complications. Six patients had normal sinus node function postoperatively including all the four patients with documented normal sinus node function preoperatively. Three patients required implantation of an AAI pacemaker. Two patients had recurrence of atrial fibrillation within the corridor. Our experience suggests that the corridor operation should be restricted to patients with documented good sinus node function and without structural heart disease. Our experience with five patients with paroxysmal sinus node tachycardia has been disappointing. Only one patient had long‐term success although better series have been published.