The effects of abnormal ventricular activation upon the contractile pattern of the ventricles in patients with the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW) remain uncertain. Therefore we compared the motion of the anterior right ventricular wall (RV), the interventricular septum (IVS), and left ventricular posterior wall (LVPW) on echogram in nine patients with WPW and one patient with a coronary s...

We report the case of a 67-yr-old man with intermittent Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome in whom neostigmine produced life-threatening tachyarrhythmias. The patient was scheduled for microsurgery for a laryngeal tumour. When he arrived in the operating room, the electrocardiogram showed normal sinus rhythm with a rate of 82 beat min-1 and a narrow QRS complex which remained normal throughou...

A 29-year-old man presents with a recent episode of light-headedness of sudden onset. Although he denies associated loss of consciousness, witnesses report that he was briefly unresponsive to verbal stimuli. He also denies chest pain, dyspnea, palpitations, and diaphoresis; he is currently asymptomatic. HISTORY The patient had a similar episode 2 years earlier for which he did not seek medical ...

Currently, asymptomatic ventricular preexcitation, which has been put at rest for many decades, remains a clinical challenge as there are no predictors of sudden death, which can be the first clinical presentation of the syndrome. Identification of risk factors for sudden death is important, considering the availability of a definitive treatment. Now, as radiofrequency catheter ablation of acce...

The history of the Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome is a 50-year–long tale of speculation and discussion among physiologists, anatomists, and clinicians about how to explain the frequently occurring tachycardias in patients showing a strange ECG.1 That riddle was solved in 1967 in Amsterdam when Durrer and associates2 showed that the WPW syndrome was based on a second connection between the...

Radio frequency (RF) catheter ablation of accessory pathways represents an interventional method in modern cardiology that has become the first-line treatment for patients with symptomatic WPW-syndrome. The aim of this study was to analyze: (1) the learning curve for the ablation procedure; (2) procedural parameters and success; and (3) personal assessment of the treatment by the patients. Lear...

A proposed model consisting of two coupled van der Pol models is considered as a description of the heart action potential. A system of ordinary differential equations is used to recreate pathological behaviour in the conducting system of the heart such as Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome and the most common tachycardia: atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia (AVNRT). Part of the popu...

OBJECTIVES This study was designed to prospectively evaluate the effects of radiofrequency ablation in Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome by scintigraphic analysis. BACKGROUND The functional changes triggered by radiofrequency current ablation of atrioventricular accessory pathways are not fully known. METHODS Forty-four patients with WPW syndrome were consecutively investigated before an...