Understanding Electrophysiology

I'm Dr. Gupta.  I'm a cardiac electrophysiologist. I work at Atrium Medical Center.

Electrophysiology is a subspecialty of cardiology that focuses on cardiac rhythm disorders or heart rhythm disorders.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common rhythm abnormality that people suffer from and up until recently, we have not had a very good ablative treatment option for atrial fibrillation.  Ah, there are various medications that have been used and are still being used with variable success; however, over the past 10 years, have rapidly been progressing and developing an ablation procedure for atrial fibrillation.  And it is now available to common public and it's available at Atrium.

The procedure is called an ablation procedure and it's not surgery.  Again, it's a procedure.  We insert electrical catheters to your heart via your groin, and there are certain areas in the heart that cause atrial fibrillation.  Typically these are areas are located at the junction of left atrium, which is the left upper chamber of the heart, and the left upper chamber of the heart receives blood from the lungs via veins called pulmonary veins.  So where the pulmonary veins join the left atrium, that area triggers this arrhythmia and typically with our electrical catheters and computerized mapping systems, we can locate these areas and cauterize these areas, which generally would, will significantly decrease and, in most patients, eliminate this arrhythmia for a long time.

The procedure, this procedure most commonly is actually done under general anesthesia.  Just that process, mechanical process, takes time, typically anywhere from 2 to 4 hours.  So we like to do it under general anesthetic because we like to have patients very still.  It doesn't hurt, and typically we would monitor people, patients, in the hospital for one night after the procedure.

Generally, the recovery from this is very quick.  Most people can resume normal activities within 2 or 3 days, you know, just take it easy for a couple days, pretty much like you would after a cardiac catheterization or a balloon angioplasty or a stent procedure.