Freezing Heart Murmurs
Reported February 20, 2008
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — More than two million people live with heart arrhythmias, or an irregular heart beat. It can leave people exhausted and cause strokes and even heart attacks. Now, a new procedure is using extreme cold to freeze hearts back into rhythm.
For the past decade, Peter Nyquists heart beat has not felt or sounded like a normal, healthy heart.
“Instead of a constant boom, boom, boom in your chest, it would be boom boom, boom, ba, ba, ba. Everything was out of beat,” Nyquist told Ivanhoe.
Even with a lot of coffee, his cardiac arrhythmia left him extremely tired.
“Walking up a flight of stairs youd be huffin and puffin and you couldnt do anything. It was just a really uncomfortable feeling in the chest,” Nyqyuist says.
Arrhythmias can cause stroke or heart attacks. But before something serious happened to Nyquist, his heart was frozen back into rhythm by a process called cryoablation.
“Its more accurate and it destroys tissue in a different factor that is safer,” Walter Kerwin, M.D., a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, told Ivanhoe.
A long, thin tube is inserted through a leg vein and threaded to the heart. Catheter cryoablation uses intense cold, minus 90 degrees Celsius, to destroy the heart tissue that is causing the irregular rhythm.
“Our goal is to identify where the origin of the abnormal rhythm is coming from and to specifically target that focus for destruction,” Dr. Kerwin says.
Before cryoablation, radiofrequency ablation heated up the tissue. It was faster, but freezing arrhythmias gives the doctor more control and there is less pain after surgery.
“They may appreciate the change almost immediately,” Dr. Kerwin says.
“My life, our lives have completely changed from it. No more do I have to worry about getting into a tense situation and your heart is going to go out,” Nyqyuist says.
Patients can be released the same day as the cryoablation. Arrhythmias are commonly treated first with medications such as digoxin and beta-blockers. Cryoablation comes into play when medications fail to control the condition.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Patient Information Line
(800) 233-2771
