Patient Selection
This retrospective study was completed with approval from the
institutional review board at Children’s Wisconsin. Comprehensive chart
review was carried out on all patients with atrioventricular
reciprocating tachycardia (AVRT) who underwent contact-sensing catheter
ablation from September 2015 to April 2018 at Children’s Wisconsin (n =
43). A historical control cohort was also created from all patients who
underwent RF catheter ablation of an accessory pathway using a standard
RF ablation catheter from June 2012 to June 2016 (n= 69). Patients with
anteroseptal or midseptal pathways were excluded from this cohort, since
CF catheters were not used for ablating pathways in these locations.
Cases utilizing multiple ablation modalities to interrupt the accessory
pathway during a single procedure were excluded from the present study
to evaluate the technologies in isolation. For several patients,
multiple accessory pathways were ablated during their procedure, and for
clarity these were treated as separate cases resulting in 49 CF and 77
control cases.