A professor of medicine at Stanford University, Sanjiv M. Narayan, MD., Ph.D., was previously a fellow at Harvard University and UCLA. He also practices as a cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology, and was once voted Top Doctor in San Diego. Dr. Sanjiv Narayan pioneered the field of mapping atrial fibrillation to identify localized drivers, and several current companies are working to build on his FIRM ablation procedure to improve ablation over former ablation processes..
Ablation is a treatment for atrial fibrillation or arrhythmia that uses small freezes or burns to disrupt the electrical signals in the heart that cause irregular heartbeats. An ablation procedure typically takes 3-6 hours with a cardiologist, technicians, and a team of specialized nurses. The patient is first anesthetized so that the practitioners can make an incision in the groin. Next, the doctor will make a hole in a blood vessel and place a sheath. They then feed an electrode catheter through the sheath, carefully leading it up to the location in the heart that requires stimulation. This is where current approaches to map atrial fibrillation provide a solution to personalize the ablation of tissue causing problems in each individual patient.
Once the software locates the abnormal tissue, the ablation technology sends electrical pulses through the catheter. Other catheters record the signals to hone in on the site. The doctor will then place the catheter on the tissue, scarring the area. Once this is done, the team leads the catheters back out of the person’s body. The final step is to monitor the patient’s vital signs, for which most people spend a night at the hospital.
Ablation is a treatment for atrial fibrillation or arrhythmia that uses small freezes or burns to disrupt the electrical signals in the heart that cause irregular heartbeats. An ablation procedure typically takes 3-6 hours with a cardiologist, technicians, and a team of specialized nurses. The patient is first anesthetized so that the practitioners can make an incision in the groin. Next, the doctor will make a hole in a blood vessel and place a sheath. They then feed an electrode catheter through the sheath, carefully leading it up to the location in the heart that requires stimulation. This is where current approaches to map atrial fibrillation provide a solution to personalize the ablation of tissue causing problems in each individual patient.
Once the software locates the abnormal tissue, the ablation technology sends electrical pulses through the catheter. Other catheters record the signals to hone in on the site. The doctor will then place the catheter on the tissue, scarring the area. Once this is done, the team leads the catheters back out of the person’s body. The final step is to monitor the patient’s vital signs, for which most people spend a night at the hospital.
