Surgical Ablation Therapy
Ablation is a procedure used to treat heart rhythm disorders, but is most commonly used to treat “atrial fibrillation”, a very common heart rhythm disorder. It uses burning or freezing with the use of a catheter to help break the electrical signals that cause irregular heartbeats, usually originating in the atria of the heart. This is done to restore the heart’s normal heart rhythm.
The heart has 4 chambers. There are 2 upper chambers called atria and 2 lower chambers called ventricles. Normally, a special group of cells (the sinus node) initiates the electrical signal to start your heartbeat. These cells are located in the sinoatrial (SA) node in the upper right atrium of the heart. During atrial fibrillation, the signal that starts the heartbeat does not start in the sinoatrial node as it should. Instead, the signal diverges elsewhere and starts somewhere else in the atria, triggering one small area at a time. The atria cannot contract normally to move blood to the ventricles. This causes the atria to vibrate or “fibrillate”. The irregular signal spreads to the ventricles, causing them to contract irregularly and sometimes faster than normal. This can be dangerous. The contraction of the atria and ventricles is no longer coordinated and the ventricles may not pump enough blood around the body. The heart’s performance decreases.