Heart Disease In The News

Ablation-pacer as good as drugs for atrial fibrillation
April 9, 2001

Researchers reported in last week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that patients with atrial fibrillation who had ablation of the AV node and insertion of a pacemaker had outcomes equivalent to patients treated with drugs.

Ablating the AV node (by passing a catheter into the heart and cauterizing the AV node via the catheter) is a highly effective way of controlling the rapid and irregular heart rate in patients with atrial fibrillation, and has been shown to lead to a marked improvement in symptoms in many patients.  However, doing so makes the patient dependent on a permanent pacemaker.  Some have feared that making the patient pacemaker-dependent might reduce their survival.

Now, investigators from the Mayo Clinic report that, in 350 patients who had the ablation procedure, survival was as good as for patients treated with the more traditional (and often less effective) drug therapies.

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