The American journal of cardiology
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The extracardiac conduit (ECC) modification of the Fontan procedure has been theorized to reduce the risk of sinus node dysfunction and atrial arrhythmia compared with the intra-atrial lateral tunnel (ILT) Fontan. This study aimed to compare the prevalence of early and late arrhythmias in patients who underwent ECC and ILT Fontan from a similar era with long-term follow-up at a single institution. A retrospective cohort study was conducted of all patients who underwent ECC or ILT Fontan from 1995 to 2005 at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. ⋯ Intra-atrial reentrant tachycardia, a potentially fatal complication of the atriopulmonary Fontan operation was infrequently encountered in both ECC and ILT Fontan cohorts. Pacemaker use was higher in the ILT group, although this difference may be explained by differences in follow-up time. Despite the low prevalence of arrhythmias after contemporary Fontan modifications, ongoing surveillance is warranted as the onset of arrhythmias may emerge after longer follow-up time.
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Percutaneous mitral valve repair using the MitraClip device has become a therapeutic alternative for high surgical risk patients with symptomatic mitral regurgitation. The procedure involves transseptal puncture and results in a new atrial septal defect (ASD) after withdrawal of the 22Fr guiding catheter. The functional effect of the new ASD is not defined. ⋯ Mean left atrial pressure was reduced from 17±8 mm Hg with the guiding catheter still in the left atrium to 15±8 mm Hg after withdrawal of the guiding catheter. In conclusion, the creation of a new ASD as consequence of the large-diameter MitraClip guiding catheter results in volume and pressure relief of the left atrium. This contributes to the immediate hemodynamic changes implemented by the MitraClip procedure.
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Electrocardiography is often advocated as a screening tool in children for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HC). We sought to establish an electrocardiographic screening tool to identify children with HC. We hypothesized that a pediatric-specific electrocardiographic criterion would perform better than the popular criteria used for screening children for left ventricular hypertrophy and HC. ⋯ However, comparison of receiver operating characteristic demonstrated an area under the curve of 0.67 for Sokolow-Lyon criterion, 0.70 for Cornell criterion, 0.83 for total 12-lead criterion, and 0.82 for pediatric-specific criterion. Pediatric-specific criterion had superior sensitivity in gene-positive children and superior overall specificity than total 12-lead criterion. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that the pediatric-specific criterion employing leads RaVL+SV2 is more accurate in identifying children with HC in comparison with other popular screening criteria.