Key result
A noncontact intracardiac ultrasound ablation and imaging catheter demonstrated feasibility in simulations and proof-of-concept experiments, achieving a 37 degrees C temperature rise.
Why the study?
Does a noncontact intracardiac ultrasound ablation and imaging catheter achieve sufficient temperature rise and imaging capability for treating atrial fibrillation in simulations and proof-of-concept experiments?
Does a noncontact intracardiac ultrasound ablation and imaging catheter achieve sufficient temperature rise and imaging capability for treating atrial fibrillation in simulations and proof-of-concept experiments?
A novel noncontact intracardiac ultrasound catheter demonstrates feasibility for simultaneous ablation and imaging in proof-of-concept models for atrial fibrillation treatment.
Supports preclinical development of noncontact ultrasound catheters; leaves open translation to human AF ablation.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) affects 1% of the population and results in a cost of 2.8 billion dollars from hospitalizations alone. Treatments that electrically isolate portions of the atria are clinically effective in curing AF. However, such minimally invasive catheter treatments face difficulties in mechanically positioning the catheter tip and visualizing the anatomy of the region. We propose a noncontact, intracardiac transducer that can ablate tissue and provide rudimentary imaging to guide therapy. Our design consists of a high-power, 20 mm by 2 mm, 128-element, transducer array placed on the side of 7-French catheter. The transducer will be used in imaging mode to locate the atrial wall; then, by focusing at that location, a lesion can be formed. Imaging of previously formed lesions could potentially guide placement of subsequent lesions. Successive rotations of the catheter will potentially enable a contiguous circular lesion to be created around the pulmonary vein. The challenge of intracardiac-sized transducers is achieving high intensities (300-5000 W/cm2) needed to raise the temperature of the tissue above 43 degrees C. In this paper, we demonstrate the feasibility of an intracardiac-sized transducer for treatment of atrial fibrillation. In simulations and proof-of-concept experiments, we show a 37 degrees C temperature rise in the lesion location and demonstrate the possibility of lesion imaging.
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Wong et al. (2006) studied Atrial fibrillation. Noncontact intracardiac ultrasound ablation and imaging catheter was evaluated on Feasibility of intracardiac-sized transducer (temperature rise and lesion imaging). A noncontact intracardiac ultrasound ablation and imaging catheter demonstrated feasibility in simulations and proof-of-concept experiments, achieving a 37 degrees C temperature rise.
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