Catheter Ablation for Supraventricular Tachycardia

Although its true prevalence in the general population is unknown, supraventricular tachycardia is the most common cause of paroxysmal tachycardia in children and young adults. These arrhythmias are due most frequently to the continuous movement of an electrical wave front over a pathway (reentry) involving the atrioventricular node or accessory atrioventricular connections. In atrioventricular nodal reentry, the reentry circuit comprises a "slow" pathway, which usually functions as the anterograde limb, and a "fast" pathway, which serves as the retrograde limb of the tachycardia circuit. Although the precise structural characteristics of these pathways are not well defined, they have different electrophysiologic . . .