A new study finds a new technique to treat atrial fibrillation may be more effective than drug therapy in certain cases. Atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) is a common heart rhythm problem. It is linked to an increased, long-term risk of stroke, heart failure and even death. Scientists now say a heated catheter may be more effective than drug therapy when it comes to treating the intermittent form of A-Fib.
"My heart would just start racing and I would kinda lose my breath and usually it only lasted for a couple of seconds," said Robin Drabant, catheter ablation patient. "But as I got older they got progressively worse and more frequent."
Drabant has been dealing with this heart problem since her teens. She underwent catheter ablation nearly two years ago.
Dr. David Wilber, physician at Loyola University Medical Center, tracks spikes of electrical impulses that demonstrate the rapid beating of the muscles around the pulmonary veins.
"The goal is to destroy the muscle around the pulmonary veins in order to prevent those transmissions of electrical impulses to the rest of the heart," said David J. Wilber, M.D.
In a study printed in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr. Wilber and fellow researchers studied nearly 170 patients from October 2004 until 2007. All patients had a form of A-Fib that stops and starts on its own. 106 had catheter ablation. Doctors treated 61 of the patients with anti-arrhythmic drugs.
"60 and 70 percent of patients treated with catheter ablation never had another episode after the treatment but about 30 percent did," Dr. Wilber stated. "In contrast patients treated with drug therapy had somewhere between a 80 and 90 percent recurrence of arrhythmias over that time frame."
Robin Drabant says undergoing the procedure was the best decision she has ever made. "I wish I'd made it years before because my quality of life is just so much more improved."
"Drugs have been the mainstay for along time. They've not been effective," Dr. Wilber added. "We now have something that's very clearly and very objectively demonstrated to be far more effective not only in controlling Atrial Fibrillation and the symptoms but improving quality of life."
Because of the study's positive results, trials of the catheter ablation procedure were halted early.
