The advent of radiofrequency catheter ablation for termination of atrioventricular reentrant tachycardia (AVRT) in patients with preexcitation syndromes marked the beginning of a new era in clinical electrophysiology. With a pea-sized burn applied to a culprit accessory pathway, a cure could be achieved with a 90% or greater success rate.Early recurrences could be treated with a repeat procedure and late recurrences were rare. Very quickly catheter ablation was applied in cases with atrioventricular junctional reentrant tachycardia (AVJRT) and atrial flutter (AFL) with similar success and relatively few radiofrequency applications. It is generally agreed that the impetus for the use of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) resulted from the seminal finding of Jais et al. and Haissaguerre et al. that those patients whose AF was resistant to standard antiarrhythmic drugs manifested ectopic firing arising from the myocardium within the pulmonary veins (PVs).
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