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Chapter
Complications of Atrial Fibrillation Ablation: How to Prevent and Manage Cerebrovascular Accidents
ICE-guided pulmonary vein antrum isolation seems to prevent cerebrovascular accidents in patients with symptomatic drug-refractory AF who are not receiving anticoagulation therapy. ICE-guided pulmonary vein an...
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Chapter
Systematic Electrical Disconnection of Superior Vena Cava in Addition to Pulmonary Vein Ablation: Is It Worthwhile?
Although final results are not yet available, it is interesting to note that patients who had complete disconnection of the superior vena cava have had a good initial follow-up. However, these preliminary resu...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Acute Termination of Atrial Flutter: Class III Drugs or Transesophageal Pacing?
Atrial flutter (AFL) is an arrhythmia which occurs frequently. Epidemiological data show an incidence of 88/100 000 new cases per year in the general population in USA, with 200 000 new cases every year [1]. T...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Atrial Fibrillation: Catheter Laser Balloon Ablation
Recently many studies have reported that the left atrium has a central role in the initiation and maintenance of atrial fibrillation (AF); the most arrhythmogenic areas of the left atrium are in the pulmonary ...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Risk Stratification and Prevention of Thromboembolism: What Is the Role of Intracardiac Echocardiography?
Pulmonary vein isolation is becoming the treatment of choice for symptomatic atrial fibrillation (AF) that is refractory to drugs [1–3]. However, thromboembolic complications are an important limitation of thi...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Catheter Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation: What Are the Risks and Complications and How Do We Avoid Them?
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, with a prevalence of between 2% and 4% in the general population over 60 years old and an increasing incidence with age [1]. Its presence causes ...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Class IC Drug Plus Ibutilide for Acute Cardioversion of Atrial Fibrillation: What Is the Rationale and What Are the Results?
Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, with a prevalence ranging from 2% to 4% in the general population over 60 years old and an incidence that increases with age.
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Patients Undergoing ICD Implantation: How Many Need Biventricular Pacing?
The goal of ICD therapy is to prevent premature sudden cardiac death (SCD) in patients who would otherwise have a long-term survival expectancy. The major challenge is to detect the greatest number of patients...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Class IC/Amiodarone Atrial Flutter: What Are the Long-Term Results of Radiofrequency Ablation?
Atrial fibrillation is the most frequent arrhythmia in clinical practice. Its prevalence varies from 0.5% to 9% [1] of the general population between 50 and 80 years of age. It may appear in the clinical histo...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
How to Predict and Avoid Complete AV Block Complicating Radiofrequency Ablation of AV Nodal Slow Pathway
Slow pathway ablation is currently used to cure common and uncommon A-V node reentrant tachycardia (AVN RT). The technique has a success rate of about 100% and a 0.5%–2% risk of inadvertent complete AV block [...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Implantable Atrial Defibrillator: What are the Results of Initial Experience?
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia in clinical practice for which patients are hospitalized, engendering high human and economic costs [1, 2]. The limited efficacy and the side effects of d...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Implantable Atrial Defibrillator: Why not a Patient-Activated Drug Delivery System?
Atrial fibrillation is a very frequent and potentially dangerous cardiac arrhythmia, increasing in prevalence with advancing years (from < 0.3% between 25 and 35 years of age to > 5% between 62 and 90 years of...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Patient-Activated Implantable Drug Delivery System for Treatment of Vasovagal Syncope: A Simple Solution?
Vasovagal events, like many other autonomic nervous system disturbances, have a cyclic and unpredictable course with usually brief periods of symptom recrudescence (so-called “clusters”) alternating with somet...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Low-Energy Internal Defibrillation: How Many Patients Are Still in Sinus Rhythm After 1 Year?
Low-energy internal atrial defibrillation has recently been introduced into clinical practice as an effective and safe method of restoring sinus rhythm in patients with atrial fibrillation [1–5]. The technique...
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Chapter
AV Junction Modification for Atrial Fibrillation: Which End Points?
Controlling ventricular rate in patients with intermittent or chronic atrial fibrillation (AF), in whom it is not possible to maintain sinus rhythm through drug therapy, is often a problem. Control of ventricu...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Surface Electrocardiogram in Ventricular Pre-excitation: How Reliable Is It To Locate the Site of Accessory Pathway?
It is estimated that about 3–4/1000 individuals are born with accessory pathway. These patients may have anterograde manifest conduction and hence show ventricular pre-excitation with short PR interval and del...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
What Are the Acute and Long-Term Results of Transvenous Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators?
The clinical experience with implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) has been limited for many years almost exclusively to devices requiring thoracotomy for placement of one or more epicardial electrodes...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Radiofrequency Ablation of Atrioventricular Node Reentrant Tachycardias: Which Results and Predictors of Success and Recurrence?
Atrioventricular (AV) node reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT) is the most common cause of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (1). Many electrophysiologic data suggest that the reentry circuit in AVNRT contains...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Methodology of Head-Up Tilt Test: What is the Sensitivity and Specificity of the Different Protocols?
Transient hypotension and bradycardia of vasovagal origin are thought to be the most common cause of syncope (1). Substantiation of the diagnosis, however, is sometimes difficult when it is based solely on cli...
