The Permanent Form of Junctional Reciprocating Tachycardia

In 1967, Coumel et al. [1] described a fascinating tachycardia with a normal QRS occurring predominantly in infants and children. Due to the incessant nature of this tachycardia the arrhythmia was named “permanent junctional reciprocating tachycardia” (PJRT). Although the clinical characteristics and electrocardiographic findings of PJRT have been confirmed following the original reports of the French authors, controversy has persisted for many years concerning the pathophysiologic substrate of this arrhythmia [2–9]. Recent data strongly suggest that PJRT represents a “variant” form of the preexcitation syndromes [10–17].