Doylestown Health Testing New Tech To Treat Irregular Heartbeat

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Electrophysiologists at Doylestown Health are among the first in the country to test a breakthrough technology currently being studied to treat arrhythmia.

Ireland-based medical tech company Medtronic developed the new technology called the PulseSelect Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA) System, which uses pulsed electric fields to treat atrial fibrillation, also known as irregular heartbeat.

Robert Sangrigoli, MD, and John Harding, MD, used it to treat three patients last month. Dr. Harding calls the technology revolutionary: "This is the next big step in cardiac ablation."

Atrial fibrillation (also called AFib or AF), also called irregular heart beat or arrhythmia, can lead to blood clots, stroke, and heart failure. An estimated 2.7 million Americans are living with the condition.

Pulsed field ablation (PFA) differs from existing techniques used to treat arrhythmia, which involve using either radio frequency (RF) energy that heat the heart tissue, or Cryo energy which freezes it. While successful, Dr. Sangrigoli said, those techniques are imperfect and can result in complications.

“Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is very different from current ablation techniques,” Dr. Sangrigoli said. “PFA delivers very short duration (nanoseconds to milliseconds) energy pulses, which is very effective at eliminating only the targeted tissue with essentially no change in temperature, thereby protecting nearby tissue.”

The clinical trial, known as PULSED AF, will demonstrate the safety profile of the new technology, which has the potential to be a "game changer," Dr. Harding said.

Doylestown Health's Atrial Fibrillation (AFIB) Center treats patients with heart arrhythmia conditions.

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