Patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) are prone to develop atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. Multiple factors throughout life contribute to arrhythmogenicity substrate such as (i) (longstanding) volume and/or pressure overload, (ii) scar tissue, (iii) ageing-related structural remodelling, (iv) cardiovascular risk factors and (v) tachycardia-induced remodelling. At present, it is unknown whether, and to what extent, paediatric patients with CHD have atrial or ventricular conduction disorders early in life and whether there is a correlation between duration of volume/pressure overload and extensiveness of conduction disorders. To investigate this, we initiated high-resolution intraoperative epicardial mapping in paediatric patients with CHD undergoing primary open-heart surgery.
Keywords: Cardiac atrial mapping; Congenital heart disease; Electrophysiology.
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery. All rights reserved.