Electrophysiology and Pacing Program

Arkansas Children's Electrophysiology Program offers specialized care for children who may have heart rhythm problems, such as arrhythmias, or children with pacemakers or other implantable devices. We provide evaluation and management of heart rhythm disorders in infants, children and adolescents. Electrophysiology helps us study the heart's electrical system, which controls how fast or slow the heart beats. When the heart's electrical system is working efficiently, all the heart's chambers beat in synch. When the electrical system is not working as it should, heartbeats may be too fast, too slow or irregular causing arrhythmias.

Possible Conditions

The Arkansas Children's Electrophysiology Program cares for patients with all types of congenital and acquired arrhythmias. More than 300 patients are followed, many of whom are newly diagnosed. The most common diagnoses we follow include:

• Arrythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia/Cardiomyopathy (AVRD/C)
• Atrial flutter/fibrillation
• Atrial tachycardia
• Bradycardia
• Brugada syndrome
• Catecholenergic Polymorphic Ventricular tachycardia (CPVT)
• Complete Heart Block
• Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM)
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM)
• Long QT syndrome (LQT)
• Palpitations
• Premature atrial contractions (PACs)
• Premature ventricular contractions (PVCs)
• Short QT syndrome
• Sinus node dysfunction
• Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT)
• Syncope
• Ventricular tachycardia
• Ventricular fibrillation
• Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW)

Possible Treatments

As a part of the Arkansas Children's Heart Institute, the electrophysiology program offers a variety of clinical services, including inpatient and outpatient care. Specific services offered by the Electrophysiology team can be invasive or non-invasive and include the following:

Invasive Services

• Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators (ICDs) implantation into the heart and veins.
• Invasive electrophysiology study and ablation procedures for supraventricular tachycardia and ventricular tachycardia or other arrhythmias are performed in a dedicated cardiac electrophysiology catheterization lab. In ACH about 125 procedures are performed annually.
• Implantable Loop Recorders (ILR) implant and monitoring- ILRs monitor the heart continuously to evaluate for arrhythmias.
• Subcutaneous Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators (S-ICD) is a newer technology and is implanted without using the veins or going inside the heart.

Non-invasive Services

• Follow up and management of patients with implanted devices in specialty clinics.
• Holter monitoring, electrocardiograms, remote event monitoring and implantable loop recorder evaluations for arrhythmias
• Medication challenge for certain arrhythmias including Procainamide and Epinephrine challenge tests.
• Genetic testing, family evaluation and counseling for various arrhythmias substrate including long QT, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, etc.

Locations