Searing the heart for the better
Catheter destroys heart tissue to stifle atrial fibrillation
By Nathan Seppa
Talk about heartburn. Using a catheter with a charged tip, doctors can sizzle wayward heart cells and correct an irregular heartbeat better than standard drugs can, a head-to-head comparison shows. The report appears in the Jan. 27 Journal of the American Medical Association.
The procedure isn’t new, having been used for more than 20 years. But despite a long track record and an upsurge in use during the last five years, the technique hasn’t been fully accepted by the U.S. medical community. It can correct atrial fibrillation, a weak, rapid heartbeat that carries health risks.
“There are doctors who take a more conservative view and continue to try drugs” to treat atrial fibrillation, says cardiologist David Wilber of Loyola University Health Center in Maywood, Ill., who coauthored the new study. As a result, the procedure, called catheter ablation, has remained a second-line treatment and continues to undergo testing, he says, even though about half of patients fail to control their atrial fibrillation with medication.
In the new study, Wilber and an international team identified patients with atrial fibrillation, the most common form of heart arrhythmia. All had failed to improve on at least one drug. The researchers randomly assigned 100 patients to get the catheter procedure and 51 to receive a standard drug they hadn’t previously taken.