Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome – Overview

Transcript

Well, let’s start by taking a look at your heart. You might remember this from middle school anatomy. Your heart has four chambers. We call the top two your atria and the bottom two chambers are called your ventricle. Now a healthy heart is powered by a consistent electrical stimulus thanks to a natural pacemaker within the right atrium called the sinus node. It’s responsible for stimulating the electrical activity of your heart. In fact, it’s responsible for your heartbeat, which is caused by your heart’s contraction. In a healthy person, this happens six to a hundred times a minute. Just as electricity might travel along a wire, in your heart, electrical activity travels along the atrioventricular or AV node. What is this AV node? Well, it acts as a ventricular gatekeeper. It collects and regulates the electrical activity before firing it down to the bottom chamber. This electrical impulse causes the ventricle to contract and pump out blood. Now, in some people, the normal rhythm of the heart is disrupted. This is what happens with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, which is an extremely rare congenital heart disorder.