2024-02-20 18:57:25
When the heart beats in an anarchic, rapid and irregular manner, we speak of atrial fibrillation. This heart rhythm disorder affects more than 750,000 people in France. These chaotic contractions prevent the heart from pumping blood properly.
Symptoms ? Palpitations, shortness of breath, fatigue. Ultimately, this can lead to heart failure as well as the appearance of a clot in the heart which can migrate to the brain. Atrial fibrillation increases the likelihood of having a stroke four or five times. Although, in certain situations, drug treatment is sufficient, ablation of the fibrillation by a cardiologist is often necessary.
Also read. In Rennes, this clinic uses safer surgical technology for cardiac arrhythmias
To do this, the private Confluent establishment of the Vivalto group, in Rezé, has recently offered a new technique. Namely, an electroporation system. This involves producing electrical microshocks to destroy the pathological tissues responsible for the arrhythmia.
This method is an additional tool which is added to the two existing thermal techniques, namely radiofrequency (heat) or cryoablation (this consists of destroying tumors using very low temperatures).
Not necessarily a revolution
This new selective ablation process “specifically targets the areas of the heart to be treated, in a lasting and efficient manner, without affecting adjacent tissues, in particular the esophagus, the phrenic nerve and the vagus nerve”, explain Doctors Abbey and Malliet, cardiologists and rhythmologists, at the Confluent private hospital.
Is this a revolution in the treatment of arrhythmia, as Confluent claims in their press release? “The term is strong, we can rather speak of an evolution”, underlines a cardiologist professor who is not part of Confluent. The great advantage of this new technique is that it takes less medical time, reducing intervention times by twenty minutes compared to other techniques.
Confluent is the first cardiology department in Pays de la Loire to perform this technique. It would not be surprising if other establishments quickly follow.
1708458724
#innovative #treatment #heart #rhythm #disorders #tested #Nantes