Like Holter monitoring, transtelephonic monitoring continues for days or weeks and enables patients to send the EKG via telephone to a monitoring station when an arrhythmia is felt, or to store the information in the recorder and transmit it later. This diagnostic method is often helpful to evaluate for underlying heart disease. If the heart rate cannot be quickly controlled, electrical cardioversion may be used. Cardioversion, the electric shock to the chest wall, is usually performed emergencies. This device briefly suspends the heart's activity and allows it to return to a normal rhythm.
Ablation destroys the heart tissue that causes the arrhythmia.
The tissue can be destroyed by catheterization or surgery. Radiofrequency catheter ablation, performed in a cardiac catheterization laboratory, can cure atrial flutter and control the heart rate in atrial fibrillation. The patient is awake but sedated. A thin tube called a catheter is inserted into a vein and is threaded into the heart. At the end of the catheter, a device maps the electrical pathways of the heart.