Surgical incisions from congenital heart disease repair can create boundaries of slow conduction or block, facilitating late-onset atrial arrhythmias.
evelopment of sustained atrial arrhythmias in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) becomes more common years after successful anatomic repair despite early decreases in hemodynamic burden on the heart after surgical repair. 1 Surgical incisions required to open the heart to allow access to holes and abnormal valve anatomy may be associated with atrial arrhythmias in the early postoperative period. More commonly, these incisions set-up boundaries of slow conduction or regions of conduction block that facilitate the occurrence of either focal or reentrant atrial arrhythmias as described in the report by Klehs et al. One may ask, why so long after surgery?
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Jeffrey P. Moak (2017) studied this question.
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