Education in Heart
Congenital heart diseaseManagement of asymptomatic Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to Dr John Triedman, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA; john.triedman@cardio.chboston.org
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome (WPW) is a frequently encountered electrocardiographic abnormality and an important diagnostic and therapeutic issue for cardiac specialists. Estimates of WPW prevalence in the general population are contingent on the likelihood of asymptomatic patients having an electrocardiogram (ECG) performed, and range from 0.1–0.2%. WPW consists of pre-excitation of the QRS (the delta wave) caused by eccentric activation of the ventricular myocardium via an accessory atrioventricular (AV) connection (accessory pathway, historically called the bundle of Kent) (fig 1). In addition to ventricular pre-excitation observed in sinus rhythm, the electrophysiological consequences of this connection include the paroxysmal occurrence of atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia (SVT) and, at considerably lower frequency, the occurrence of rapidly conducted atrial fibrillation, which may result in ventricular fibrillation and death.
Figure 1 Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome with pronounced pre-excitation.
| |||||||||
Accessory pathways (APs) by definition traverse the AV groove, and are identified in all anatomical quadrants of the
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
- Citation Map
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Google Scholar
PubMed
BMJ Learning
Topic Collections
-
Drugs: cardiovascular system
-
Pacing and electrophysiology
-
Tachyarrhythmias
-
Heart failure
-
Interventional cardiology
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
