La Candelaria Hospital in Tenerife uses a new technique to treat atrial fibrillation | Green Homer

The head of the hospital’s arrhythmia unit, Luis Alvarez, explained this Friday at a press conference that this advanced technique focuses on the use of electric fields to treat cardiac tissue, allowing for selective tissue ablation.

In addition, he reported that nine interventions have been carried out using this technique and are being carried out in 16 hospital centers in Spain.

The head of the hospital’s cardiology department, Julio Hernandez, emphasized that one of the advantages of this method is that it distinguishes between the cells to be treated and adjacent tissues without affecting neighboring structures.

Another advantage is that if you have no problems with the puncture, the patient can go home the same day as the procedure, since when a person wakes up from general anesthesia, he usually does not feel any discomfort.

This “very early” discharge allows for more interventions, although the waiting list for this type of intervention is short, he said.

This method can be used in patients aged 50 to 70 years, with a slightly higher prevalence in men than women, since they are the ones most affected by atrial fibrillation.

According to cardiologists, it is considered when they continue to have symptoms and treatment does not help.

They added that while long-term results are similar to those of commonly used methods such as cryoablation and radiofrequency, the advantages of this new method in terms of the speed and safety of the procedure can improve both the patient experience and the quality of treatment. hospital management.

Atrial fibrillation is the most common persistent cardiac arrhythmia and its increase is associated with the aging population.

It is a change in the normal conduction of the heart, causing the atria to not contract properly and the ventricles to contract irregularly and too quickly, preventing the heart from functioning normally.

Although it can occur in the heart without preexisting pathology, it usually occurs in people with heart pathology associated with other diseases such as high blood pressure or lung disease, among others.