Life-threatening heart rhythm problems even without SURGERY treatable?
Radio ablation can cure complex arrhythmias
A Swiss team of Doctors has for the first time applied a new method of treatment for life-threatening heart rhythm disorders successfully. The core aspect of the treatment irradiation, which can be controlled thanks to a new technology and adjusted in real time. Thus, complicated cases can be dealt with the heart rhythm disorder in which an Operation was unthinkable.
MR-guided radio ablation is called the new therapy option for severe heart rhythm disturbances. You may be Concerned with heart rhythm disorders in which conventional treatment methods cannot jump to save your life. The new procedure will be offered since April, 2019 in the clinic for Radio-Oncology at the University hospital of Zurich and has recently been applied for the first time.
Radiation control in real time
With the so-called MRI-Linac can be carried out in the device, the treatment. “This linear accelerator, we can before and during the irradiation by means of MR imaging to track each target in the body of a patient and the irradiation in real time to control and customize,” explains physicist Dr. Tanadini-Length is the function of the device. Through the real-time monitoring of the irradiation could be done even more precise.
The device was developed for the treatment of cancer
“Originally, this new technology has been developed for the treatment of cancer”, emphasizes the Director of the Hospital Professor Matthias Guckenberger in a press release on the new method of treatment. Now the so-called radio ablation was for the first Time worldwide for the treatment of a patient with recurrent, life-threatening heart rhythm disorders. The therapy is selectively irradiated for the rhythm disturbance responsible for the Area of the heart muscle, explain to the radiologist.
Hope for hopeless cases
The radio ablation, in particular, severe cases, a new Option. The treated Patient had previously received intensive, but unsuccessful therapies. “Despite intensive medical therapy and repeated minimally invasive surgical and catheter ablation of the arrhythmias could not be prevented,” says Dr. Ardan Saguner, senior physician of the clinic for cardiology. More invasive procedures would not have been due to the complexity of the Case makes sense.
First-time and successful implementation
“We needed in this patient, a new, innovative approach to therapy,” Dr. Saguner. The treatment with the MRI-Linac unit offered the necessary accuracy for this kind of intervention is required. As the medical team tells, could be stopped, the life-threatening arrhythmias by radio-ablation. The Patient has since been released without rhythm disorders from the hospital.
Successes have yet to be tested
Yet it was in this treatment, an experimental procedure that should be targeted in larger clinical studies in terms of its long-term effectiveness, the doctors to consider. Currently be established on a national and international level collaborations, to check the status of the radio ablation carefully. (vb)
