14th International Congress
THE "NEW FRONTIERS"
OF ARRHYTHMIAS 2000

Jan. 29 - Feb. 5, 2000
Marilleva, Trento, Italy

RT-48

Atrial ectopic tachycardia in infancy

Luciano De Simone, Simone Pratesi*, Iva Pollini, Silvia Favilli, Adriano Manetti.
Cardiology Unit, *Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Meyer Children’s Hospital, Florence, Italy

Background

Atrial ectopic tachycardia (AET) is unusual in pediatric age, particularly in the neonate and infant¹; a recent study reports a prevalence of 0.46% in a population of young symptomatic arrhythmia patients², but the prevalence in infancy it’s still unknown . The arrhythmia was probably first described by Gallavardin in 1922³ and can be defined as a tachycardia sustained by a rapidly firing automatic pacemaker placed in left or right atrium; its electrophysiological properties in pediatric age have been satisfactorily described by Gillette and Garson in 1977⁴. In infancy few cases have been reported and the most frequent symptoms consist of tachypnea and failure to thrive, with an echocardiographic pattern of dilated cardiomyopathy. We present the clinical course of three patients with AET, all diagnosed in the first year of life.