What is Heart Ablation?
Heart ablation is a procedure to treat cardiac arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation (AF). It gets rid of muscle fibers in the chambers of the heart that trigger and sustain abnormal rhythms.
Catheter Ablation
- Radiofrequency catheter ablation uses a heating technology to destroy part of the heart muscle containing the electrical pathways that cause arrhythmias.
- Cryoablation (particularly to treat AF) uses freezing technology to ablate or destroy heart tissue that causes arrhythmias.
Both procedures are performed at UC San Diego Health, providing relief for patients who may not have responded well to medications, or who would rather not or cannot take medications.
Dr. Gregory Feld, medical director of UC San Diego Health’s Electrophysiology Program, and his team of cardiac electrophysiologists have performed this procedure in thousands of patients over the past 30 years.
AF, a condition that affects more than 2 million people in the U.S., is a common cause of stroke and congestive heart failure. Ablation for AF may also be performed as part of open-heart surgery or using a minimally invasive, robotically assisted approach in our
Hybrid Operating Room.
Success Rates
- Catheter ablation for other atrial arrhythmias, including atrial flutter, and supraventricular tachycardia with or without Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, has been performed in several thousand patients over the past 20 years, with a success rate approaching 100 percent.
- The success rate of catheter ablation for AF is between 60 percent and 85 percent after one or two procedures, depending on how long the patient has been in atrial fibrillation. The best result is achieved within one year of the onset of Afib.
- Catheter ablation for ventricular arrhythmias, including premature ventricular beats, ventricular tachycardia, and even ventricular fibrillation, can also be performed, with success rates ranging from 50 to 95 percent. Read about targeted ventricular fibrillation ablation, which was first developed at UC San Diego.
Facilities
Catheter ablations are performed in our
electrophysiology lab, the most advanced in the region.
Epicardial Catheter Ablation
This innovative technique, performed by UC San Diego Health specialists, offers a less invasive alternative to conventional open heart surgical ablation for
ventricular tachycardia.
During epicardial catheter ablation, a special catheter is passed through the chest wall into the pericardial space around the heart. Using a cooled-tip catheter, radiofrequency energy is then used to cauterize the heart tissue causing the abnormal heart rhythm
Our Cardiovascular Institute is the only place in the San Diego region to routinely perform this ablation technique.
Mini-Maze Procedure
The Mini-Maze procedure provides an alternative to conventional catheter ablation for
atrial fibrillation (AF). It may be used in patients with chronic, persistent AF. This technique is performed in collaboration with cardiothoracic surgeons and is used to interrupt the electrical pathways in the upper chambers of the heart, converting AF to a normal rhythm.
This minimally invasive surgery uses an ablation technique to create a “maze” of lesions in specific areas of the heart. Accessing the heart from between the ribs, the surgeon uses brief bursts of radiofrequency energy to cauterize the tissue. These cauterized areas no longer conduct electrical impulses, which interrupts the transmission of the abnormal signals and allows the rest of the heart to resume beating normally.
At UC San Diego Health, research has shown this treatment to be curative in approximately 85 percent of atrial fibrillation patients.