Maze Procedure in Single Ventricle Patients

As of September 2007, 120 patients have undergone a Fontan conversion procedure at Children's Memorial Hospital (Chicago, IL). One of the primary indications for surgery in these patients has been arrhythmias, either atrial reentry tachycardia or atrial fibrillation. The surgical treatment of those two lesions has been with the modified right atrial maze and the Cox-maze III. The purpose of this review is to describe our strategy for performing the maze procedure in these single-ventricle patients. The primary tool for performing the maze in this series has been with the cryocatheter with cryoablation at -160°C for 1 minute. These cryoablation lesions have been combined with standard surgical incisions in the right and left atria. The early mortality in this series is 1%, late mortality is 5%. Freedom from atrial reentry tachycardia recurrence at 5 years is 86%. Freedom from atrial fibrillation recurrence is 98% at 5 years.