HRS Board Review 2025 New Courses (Reviewers Copy)-Workshop 1_Tomaselli_2025

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The correct approach to terminating a macro re-entrant tachycardia in the left atrium is to increase the wavelength. This disrupts the arrhythmia by exceeding the path length, causing the wave head to collide with the wave tail, thereby preventing sustained re-entry. While other strategies like reducing conduction velocity or creating a bidirectional block can be considered, they do not effectively terminate the tachycardia. Increasing the wavelength is achieved by extending the refractory period, making the arrhythmia unsustainable. Other factors like exaggerated repolarization dispersion may lead to different, potentially harmful arrhythmias but are not effective here.

Keywords

macro re-entrant tachycardia

left atrium

wavelength

refractory period

arrhythmia termination