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This is a test, in which
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ARRHYTHMIA
When
a child’s heart rate is disturbed — whether it is irregular, racing or abnormally slow — it usually is due to an arrhythmia.
An arrhythmia is a condition in which the heart’s electrical conduction system is disrupted.
Normally, the heart's chambers — the atria and the ventricles
— coordinate contractions. When there are problems in
the conduction system, the electrical impulses that initiate
contractions are abnormal, causing an arrhythmia.
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Dr.
Naomi Kertesz
reprograms the pacemaker
of patient Kiara Alexander |
Children who have heart surgery for another condition
often develop an arrhythmia later. Scarring from the
first surgery
can cause a disturbance because it doesn’t allow
conduction through the heart’s electrical system.
Arrhythmias usually are not dangerous unless they cause
a severe decrease in the heart’s pumping function.
If this occurs for more than a few seconds, blood circulation
is stopped, causing organ damage within minutes.
Arrhythmias
often are treated with medication — to slow or speed the
heart rate — and radiofrequency
catheter ablation. The
ablation procedure destroys the extra wire’s ability
to conduct electricity, therefore correcting the rhythm
disturbance.
Implantable defibrillators monitor abnormal heart rhythms
and deliver a shock to re-establish the normal rhythm.
“We're
able to offer our patients not only breadth of
knowledge, but also very in-depth knowledge in many
very specific areas.”
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Dr.
Naomi Kertesz
Pediatric
Electrophysiologist
Texas Children's Heart Center |
An abnormally slow heart rate is called
bradycardia, another type of arrhythmia.
Pacemakers treat patients whose heart rates are too slow
for even daily activities by looking for the heart’s own activity. When the pacemaker
does not detect the heart rate, it will regulate the pace.
The pacemaker lab in Texas Children's Heart Center monitors pacemaker
patients throughout the country and beyond some patients
have been as far away as Honduras. In 2002, the lab evaluated
more than 1,000 pacemaker patients and implanted 343
pacemakers.
The lab is able to monitor its patients using the telephone
(called transtelephonic monitoring). With a pacemaker
transmitter between the pacemaker and the mouthpiece of
the telephone, a patient transmits an electrocardiogram
(ECG, sometimes referred to as an EKG) to the lab.
Cardiologists at Texas Children’s
Heart Center read more than 11,100 ECGs in 2002. Texas
Children’s Heart Center is one of the largest centers
for arrhythmia diagnosis and treatment in the nation.
Innovation, research and the sheer volume of cases have
made Texas Children’s Heart Center one of the leading
centers for implanting and monitoring pacemakers and defibrillation
devices.
