Patent ID: 8355801

Claim:
A system for monitoring proximity between a cardiac catheter and an esophagus of a patient, the system comprising: a cardiac catheter positioned in a heart of the patient; an esophagus catheter positioned to remain in the esophagus of the patient, wherein the esophagus catheter comprises a closed distal end; a proximity signal transmitted between the cardiac catheter and the esophagus catheter; a signal processing unit in electrical communication with the cardiac catheter and the esophagus catheter; wherein the catheters are separated by a distance from each other and the signal processing unit processes the proximity signal transmitted by one of the catheters and received by the other of the catheters to measure in real-time a characteristic of the signal for determining the distance between the catheters, wherein the system is configured to trigger an audio and/or visual signal to a user when a pre-determined distance between the catheters is reached.