EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARRHYTHMIA & ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY – VOLUME 2 ISSUE 2 – WINTER 2016

Dear Colleagues, Welcome to the spring 2018 edition of the European Journal of Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology. I hope that you will enjoy reading the selection of articles in this issue, which all offer insights into a range of pertinent topics in the arrhythmia and electrophysiology arenas. First, we have an interesting and timely editorial from […]

Electrical isolation of the pulmonary veins is the generally accepted (“cornerstone”) approach to treat symptomatic atrial fibrillation (AF) by catheter ablation.1,2 Pulmonary-vein isolation (PVI) can be achieved either by circumferential heating (“fire”) or freezing (“ice”) of the left atrial tissue surrounding the pulmonary veins. The former methodology involves the sequential, “point-bypoint” application of focal radiofrequency-current […]

The atrial transseptal puncture (TSP) technique is an indispensable procedure in the invasive cardiac catheterisation laboratory. TSP was initially developed in 1959 by Ross, Braunwald and Morrow at the National Institutes of Health, to allow for catheter access to the left atrium (LA) and left ventricle (LV) for the evaluation of valvular heart disease.1 However, […]

Chest pain evaluation during pregnancy or the post-partum period poses diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma. The differential diagnosis would include acute myocardial infarction, coronary spasm, dissection, myocarditis and non-cardiac chest pain. Spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) is a rare cause of acute ischaemic coronary events.1,2 It usually occurs during pregnancy or post-partum period in young women […]

Case report A 50-year-old man with a history of myocardial infarction (MI) in 2006 and arterial hypertension presented with episodes of paroxysmal atrio-ventricular block (AVB). He was also affected by severe obesity (353 kg) with a body mass index (BMI) of 121 kg/m2 and diabetes mellitus (Figure 1). He was transported from another hospital to […]