Surgery for supraventricular tachycardia (SVT).

All forms of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) are now potentially curable by surgery and we believe that patients should be offered surgery as an initial therapeutic option. At Westmead Hospital, 311 patients have undergone surgery for SVT, 13 having AV node ablation, a procedure now rarely performed, and 298 have had attempts at curative surgery. One hundred and ninety-nine patients were diagnosed primarily as having a Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW) and 139 had free wall or anterior septal connections with a clinical cure rate of 98.0%. The failures were entirely due to unrecognised posterior septal connections. Sixty patients had primarily posterior septal connections with a clinical cure rate of 96%. Atrioventricular junctional re-entry tachycardia may now be cured, probably by dividing an extra nodal His-to-atrial connection. Seventy-eight patients have undergone surgery with a clinical cure rate of 92%. Fifteen patients with right atrial tachycardias, 4 patients with nodo-ventricular fibres and 2 with incessant AV tachycardia have undergone surgery. The overall clinical cure rate for all patients is 95% and 92% at late electro-physiological study (EPS).