[Surgery for arrhythmias]

Abstract

The role of surgery in the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias has been marginalized in recent years with the rise in eminence of radiofrequency current ablation especially in the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome and nodal reentrant tachycardia. The indications of antiarrhythmia surgery for ventricular arrhythmias have become standardised. The unquestioned efficacy of the surgical techniques proposed (endarterectomy or cryosurgery with or without peroperative mapping) should not be associated with unacceptable mortality rates as when left ventricular function is too poor, implantation of a defibrillator is always possible. In the domain of atrial fibrillation, the interventions proposed (corridor or maze procedures) do not have the foundations that the follow-up of a sufficient number of cases would confer but they have the merit, especially the latter, of taking the underlying physiopathological mechanisms into consideration.