Sudden Cardiac Death
What Causes Sudden Cardiac Death?
All known heart diseases can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death. Most of the cardiac arrests that lead to sudden death occur when the electrical impulses in the diseased heart become rapid (ventricular tachycardia) or chaotic (ventricular fibrillation) or both. This irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) causes the heart to suddenly stop beating. Some cardiac arrests are due to extreme slowing of the heart. This is called bradycardia.
In 90 percent of adult victims of sudden cardiac death, two or more major coronary arteries are narrowed by fatty buildups. Scarring from a prior heart attack is found in two-thirds of victims. When sudden death occurs in young adults, other heart abnormalities are more likely causes. Adrenaline released during intense physical or athletic activity often acts as a trigger for sudden death when these abnormalities are present. Under certain conditions, various heart medications and other drugs — as well as illegal drug abuse — can lead to abnormal heart rhythms that cause sudden death.
The term "massive heart attack" is often wrongly used in the media to describe sudden death. The term "heart attack" refers to death of heart muscle tissue due to the loss of blood supply, not necessarily resulting in a cardiac arrest or the death of the heart attack victim. A heart attack may cause cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death, but the terms aren't synonymous.
Reduce Your Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death with Stereotaxis VT Ablation
Unparalleled Safety
Though catheter ablation is a reasonably safe procedure, there is still the chance that a major complication can occur. These major complications can include a puncture of the heart wall or an accidental ablation of critical elements of the heart's electrical conduction system. Stereotaxis ablation has been shown to reduce the risks associated with complex ablation procedures by up to 28 times, as is demonstrated by the graph.
While some x-ray radiation is required to perform catheter ablation procedures, Stereotaxis can significantly reduce the amount of radiation exposure to patients undergoing VT ablation. A study from Leipzig, Germany showed that patients treated with Stereotaxis VT ablation were exposed to more than 66% less radiation than patients treated with conventional VT ablation (Haghjoo, J Cardiovasc Electrophysiol, 2009).
Dr. Szili-Torok and his colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam (Eur Heart J, 2010) presented a series of 64 consecutive VT ablation patients that included both idiopathic and scar-related VT. When they compared the results between the patients treated with Stereotaxis VT (n = 37) to patients treated with conventional methods (n = 27), they saw improvement in immediate success, continued success at 1 year, the time needed for the case, the number of ablation spots needed to cure the VT, and the amount of radiation exposure in the Stereotaxis VT group (see chart). They concluded that Stereotaxis offers "major advantages for VT ablation."
Combined with the magnetically enabled radiofrequency (RF) ablation catheters (NaviStar® RMT ThermoCool® and NaviStar® RMT, Biosense Webster, Inc., Diamond Bar, CA) and an advanced system for creating a diagnostic map of the heart (CARTO RMT, Biosense Webster, Inc.), Stereotaxis is part of a fully integrated solution to help physicians treat VT. The pliable nature of the magnetic catheter combined with the precision of computer-assisted navigation allows the physician to reach even the most inaccessible locations in the ventricles and to carefully treat thin tissue of the outflow vessels of the heart. This flexibility allows for more efficient VT ablation treatment by minimizing the number of early heartbeats caused by contact with a catheter, thus potentially helping the physician to create a better map to guide VT treatment. The magnetic catheter is capable of going into the heart from a variety of different directions, giving the doctor the choice of using the best approach to treat the arrhythmia.
