Abstract
Surgical destruction of critical areas of cardiac tissue as a means to “cure” patients with tachyarrhythmias has been the subject of investigation by cardiologists, cardiac electrophysiologists, and cardiac surgeons for many years. Initially, most efforts were directed at patients with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome [1,2] or ventricular tachycardia [3–7]. Since the development of those highly-invasive surgical techniques, a number of less in vasive techniques using a variety of “energy sources” have been under investigation. These have ranged from chemical ablation using ethanol [8,9], to ablation using a direct current shock [10–13] and, most prominently, to the highly successful use of radiofrequency (RF) energy for the low-risk cure of many different cardiac arrhythmias [14–16]. In this chapter we discuss the fundamental principles involved in the performance of electrode catheter ablation. Included in this section is a discussion of the induction of the clinical arrhythmia, localization or “mapping” of the critical tissue that is the target for the ablation procedure, delivery of the destructive energy to the target tissue, and finally, verification of successful elimination of the arrhythmia.
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References
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Sung, R.J., Lauer, M.R. (2000). Principles of Electrode Catheter Ablation. In: Fundamental Approaches to the Management of Cardiac Arrhythmias. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4371-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4371-4_4
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