CLINICAL AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN KOREAN PATIENTS WITH WPW SYNDROME

This study was designed to investigate the clinical and electrophysiol ogic characteristics of WPW syndromes in Korea. A total of 400 symptom atic WPW syndrome patients were consecutively recruited. The most comm on documented symptomatic tachyarrhythmia was orthodromic atrioventric ar reentrant tachycardia (75.3%), followed by atrial fibrillation (31. 3%), and antidromic atrioventricular reentrant tachycardia (6.2%). The re was a higher incidence of multiple bypass tract in patients with an tidromic tachycardia than in those with orthodromic tachycardia (30.4 vs 4.3%, P<0.001). The inducibility of tachyarrhythmia with electrophy siologic study in this study population was 95.8%. Thc most frequent l ocation of the accessory pathway was the left free wall (48.0%), follo wed by the right free wall (29.1%), posterior septum (17.5%) and anter ior septum (3.5%). These results indicated that 1) clinical and electr ophysiological characteristics of Korean patients with WPW syndrome we re similar to those of western countries and 2) the electrophysiologic study was important in the evaluation of patients with WPW syndrome.