Danbury Hospital is using a new technique that freezes heart tissue to stop atrial fibrillation, or A-fib, an irregular heartbeat that is a leading cause of stroke.
Dr. Robert Winslow, a Danbury Hospital cardiac specialist, said the hospital is one of the first in Connecticut to treat A-fib with cryoablation, or extreme cold.
By disabling damaged tissue with cold energy instead of heat, which was previously used, the treatment can perform a procedure more quickly and patients generally experience less pain, he said.
Cryoablation can help restore a patient’s normal heart rhythm. In a minimally-invasive procedure, a thin flexible tube called a balloon catheter is used to freeze the heart tissue that can trigger an irregular heartbeat. Recent studies have found cryoablation to be significantly more effective than medication, WCHN said.
Dr. John Novella recently treated a 46-year-old woman from Stamford with cryoablation at Danbury Hospital.
She was having multiple daily episodes of irregular heartbeats and arrived in AFib on the day of her procedure, Novella said.
“During her procedure, her abnormal heart rhythm was restored to normal rhythm shortly after we began applying Cryoballoon energy to her largest pulmonary vein,” he said. “Since her procedure, she has not had one episode.”
Doctors in WCHN’s network have been using the new technology less than six months.
The procedure lasts about two hours and recovery requires restricting intense physical activity for 48 hours. One advantage of cryoablation is the ability to cool tissue before freezing it to make sure the specific area targeted is the one causing the abnormal heart rhythm.
