Patient Selection
This retrospective study was completed with approval from the institutional review board at Children’s Wisconsin. Comprehensive chart review was carried out on all patients with atrioventricular reciprocating tachycardia (AVRT) who underwent contact-sensing catheter ablation from September 2015 to April 2018 at Children’s Wisconsin (n = 43). A historical control cohort was also created from all patients who underwent RF catheter ablation of an accessory pathway using a standard RF ablation catheter from June 2012 to June 2016 (n= 69). Patients with anteroseptal or midseptal pathways were excluded from this cohort, since CF catheters were not used for ablating pathways in these locations. Cases utilizing multiple ablation modalities to interrupt the accessory pathway during a single procedure were excluded from the present study to evaluate the technologies in isolation. For several patients, multiple accessory pathways were ablated during their procedure, and for clarity these were treated as separate cases resulting in 49 CF and 77 control cases.