Some very sad words from the comments section of a previous post on atrial fibrillation… Anonymous said, Is there anyone out there that has hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and was told to have an ablation? Any problems??? My husband of 45years and I believed that his cardio doctor would not put him in harms way by […]
Category: AF ablation
We all know that women have kinder hearts than do men. That’s an easy one. But what about their cardiac electrical system? The headline in the subject line of the email reads, AFib Ablation in Women: Are We Undertreating? I looked at this study a number of days ago, and initially thought–except for the number […]
One of the often sad facts of ablation in the private world of electrophysiology is the lack of “learners,” or visitors who call on our EP lab. Heck, even Henry David enjoyed the occasional visitor to his cabin in the woods. When an inventor, patent holder and heart surgeon with his engineering wiz kid asked […]
Catheter Ablation of the planets most ubiquitous arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation was in the news this week. A study showing pulmonary vein isolation is far more effective than drugs for controlling AF in a relatively young healthy patient cohort who has failed a prior anti-arrhythmic drug. It strikes me as an intellectually honest study: 5645 patients […]
When in medical school we learned that the pulmonary veins carry blood from the lungs to the heart like a simple pipe. Now we know that pulmonary veins previously thought to be inert pipes often hold the triggers for the the most common arrhythmia on earth, atrial fibrillation. Cardiac muscle bundles wrapped around these veins […]
Just when one can discover little good news in the health care reform dreariness, a text message comes from the hospital vice president overseeing cardiac care. The hospital board has approved expansion of the current dated EP (electrophysiology) lab to two modern labs side by side. Capital investments like this are not for the faint […]
There are many highlights of this outstanding meeting but the live cases are always a standout. Today there were 2 from Rochester, MN and one from Boston. Live ablation procedures on real life patients are beamed into the lecture hall via some mysterious satellite through a maze of cables. The operators, with their NFL-coach […]