Treatment of Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (Nursing)

00:01 I want you to be very aware of what the possible complications are with WPW because they can range from syncope or dizziness and passing out to increased sudden cardiac death.

00:14 Because Wolff-Parkinson-White can lead to ventricular fibrillation.

00:19 So, what do you want to look out for? When you recognize WPW, you want to be extremely careful with the type of medications that you give to this patient because this throw them into ventricular dysrhythmias and death.

00:36 So, that was a great lead into medication.

00:39 So nodal blockers like calcium channel blockers, adenosine or beta-blockers should never be given to somebody with Wolff-Parkinson-White.

00:48 The reason they're contraindicated or should never be given to them is because it puts them in increased risk of a really, really bad outcome like death.

00:58 So we don't want to give patients with pre-excitation syndrome like Wolff-Parkinson-White, calcium channel blockers, adenosine or beta-blockers.

01:11 Now there's three options that would be considered for treating WPW.

01:15 We can do vagal maneuvers or Valsalva maneuvers.

01:19 We can use medications, but which group should we absolutely not use? Correct.

01:25 No nodal blocker.

01:26 So we could use something like procainamide.

01:29 The third option is cardioversion.

01:32 Not a common treatment, but we put it in there just in case it needs to be considered.

01:38 So let's review why this is Wolff-Parkinson-White.

01:41 We know the heart rate is going to be greater than 100.

01:44 The rhythm is regular.

01:46 We do have a P wave before each QRS.

01:48 But remember that PR interval is going to be shorter than normal, and the QRS is going to be wider than normal with a delta wave.

01:59 Thank you for watching this part of our video series.