Effects of High-Energy Electrical Shocks Delivered to Atrial or Atrioventricular Junctional Tissue

For more than a decade, patients with drug-refractory supraventricular tachycardias have been treated with disruption of the normal atrioventricular conducting system or by division of anomalous atrioventricular connections at the time of open-heart surgery. In order to avoid the need for a thoracotomy, nonoperative techniques to modulate conduction have recently been developed.