A treatment that burns heart tissue to correct irregular heart rhythms almost always succeeds in preventing potentially dangerous arrhythmias and carries little risk, according to the largest medical study ever on the procedure. Researchers say the findings mean doctors should consider radiofrequency catheter ablation over drugs when treating patients with certain irregular heart rhythms, including a rapid heartbeat. The findings will be published in Tuesday's issue of Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association. Catheter ablation has become popular since its introduction roughly a decade ago.
Doctors now perform thousands every year.
The irregular heart rhythms treated by catheter ablation are rarely life-threatening but cause palpitations that can create patient anxiety. Normally, the heart beats in an electrical sequence from one chamber to the next. But with arrhythmias, electrical impulses travel down an accessory pathway. To treat these arrhythmias, doctors thread a catheter through blood vessels from the groin or a limb into the heart and burn away the tissue containing the accessory pathways that cause the heart to misfire. More than 1,000 patients studied The research, conducted between 1992 and 1995, looked at 1,050 patients at 18 hospitals who underwent catheter ablations.