Rhythm Control - Ablation |
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Maintaining your heart in normal rhythm: Once you are back in normal rhythm, there are treatments to keep you in rhythm. These may include medical therapy with anti-arrhythmic medications or a procedure such as catheter ablation, surgical ablation, or device implantation. Catheter Ablation: With this treatment, your doctor uses catheters placed through the veins in the groin and guided up to the heart (much like in a cardiac catheterization). These special catheters are used together with other specialized visualization equipment to find the areas responsible for starting and maintaining your atrial fibrillation. This process is called mapping. A geometric image of your heart and the vessels that feed blood back into the heart from the lungs is constructed which helps the physicians to find the source of AF, and guides their ablations. . Some patients will be scheduled for a cardiac CT scan or MRI images of their heart before the procedure to be used to help the doctors make a computer image of your heart for the procedure. Ablation occurs through one of these special catheters using radio-frequency waves to burn or cauterize the region of tissue that are involved in the AF circuits. (See also: Ablation preoprocedure/postprocedure instructions)
Two types of ablation are used to try to stop and prevent AF. These are pulmonary vein isolation and left atrial catheter ablation. |
