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A New Era in the Treatment of Pediatric Arrhythmias

Thomas S. Klitzner, MD, PhD; Glenn T. Wetzel, MD, PhD; Leslie A. Saxon, MD; William G. Stevenson, MD

Am J Dis Child. 1993;147(7):769-771.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THE PAST

Over the past 15 years, remarkable advances have occurred in the care of pediatric patients with arrhythmias. For the most part, progress has been the result of information obtained from invasive diagnostic electrophysiologic studies in infants and children,¹ which have allowed a mechanistic analysis of the cause of the arrhythmia and a targeted therapeutic approach to drug treatment.² The latter has focused on developing more specific antiarrhythmic agents and increasingly effective suppression of arrhythmias for children and adults. However, whereas the benefits of these pharmacologic advances have been striking, the emphasis has been on suppression of the rhythm disturbance rather than on cure.

In addition to elucidating the mechanism of an arrhythmia, electrophysiologic studies detect the origin or anatomic circuit; this information has been used to design more definitive arrhythmia therapy. Originally, the only management approach to take advantage of anatomic information was surgical. A variety . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Departments of Pediatrics (Drs Klitzner and Wetzel) and Medicine (Drs Saxon and Stevenson), UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, Calif.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication November 19, 1992.

Reprint requests to Department of Pediatrics, UCLA School of Medicine, 10833 Le Conte Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1743 (Dr Klitzner).

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