Abstract
Ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a rapid and life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia that most often occurs after healing of myocardial infarction. The same catheter techniques that use resistive endocardial heating to treat supraventricular tachycardias are less effective against post-infarction VT, in part because cure of the latter arrhythmia requires large volume, deep tissue coagulation. Greater risk may also be incurred when standard percutaneous methods are used to induce deep tissue heating, because excess endocardial damage can cause mural thrombi, and a large area of non-lethal endocardial injury may itself generate VT. To address these problems we have developed a unique optical fiber for direct intramyocardial photocoagulation which, when coupled to a diode laser (805 nm), can generate lesions up to 1 cm deep and wide without disruption of the endocardium. With further refinement this system may effectively and safely cure post- infarction VT.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 85-88 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering |
| Volume | 2970 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1997 |
| Event | Lasers in Surgery: Advanced Characterization, Therapeutics, and Systems VII - San Jose, CA, United States Duration: Feb 8 1997 → Feb 8 1997 |
Keywords
- Arrhythmia ablation
- Laser
- Thermal coagulation
- Ventricular tachycardia
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Computer Science Applications
- Applied Mathematics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering