Atrial arrhythmias: a "call to arms" for congenital heart disease caregivers.

In his poem “Rabbi Ben (sic Ibn) Ezra,” Robert Browning acknowledges the multitude of physical and nonphysical determinants of life’s richness. His narrator sees these influences as interwoven and spanning the ages from youth through adulthood in timeless fashion. In this week’s issue of Circulation, Bouchardy and colleagues2 determine the prevalence of atrial (tachy)arrhythmias (AA) in adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD) and then analyze the prognostic implications of such. The authors’ findings carry far-reaching implications that, in a fashion that Browning’s narrator would have advocated, extend to principles, design, and application of medical care that begin at the earliest pediatric years and continue throughout the entire development and aging of the ACHD population.