Introduction
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder. It is an irregular and rapid heart rate caused by heart tissue giving out erratic electrical signals that can increase a person’s risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications. The risk of AF increases with age with people over the age of 40 having a 25% chance of developing AF. With the increase in aging population in Singapore, there will be higher incidence of AF. Thus there is a need to come up with more effective forms of treatment to treat this increased number of AF patients. Locating the source of AF is necessary for target treatment of it and our investigation aims to find out more about how modelling and imaging technologies help in locating the source of AF. Methodology There are currently 2 main methods of treating AF: electrical cardioversion and catheter ablation. For electrical cardioversion, an electric shock is delivered to a patient’s heart to restore the normal heart rhythm. For catheter ablation, radiofrequency energy or cryo energy is used to selectively destroy areas of heart tissue that cause the abnormal heart rhythm. However, both methods are unable to specifically pinpoint the exact origin of the erratic electrical signals and difficult to locate the catheter tip during …show more content…
However, due to lack of software that can automate the process, it may not be made available to other cardiologists easily. Moreover, more evaluation can be done on the effect of this technique on a larger group of patients. Its effectiveness in early forms like paroxysmal AF can be further investigated too. All in all, the technique has opened up a new area of exploration in the treatment of AF focusing on tracing of electrical signals and it bears great potential as a thorough AF source-locating
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder. It is an irregular and rapid heart rate caused by heart tissue giving out erratic electrical signals that can increase a person’s risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications. The risk of AF increases with age with people over the age of 40 having a 25% chance of developing AF. With the increase in aging population in Singapore, there will be higher incidence of AF. Thus there is a need to come up with more effective forms of treatment to treat this increased number of AF patients. Locating the source of AF is necessary for target treatment of it and our investigation aims to find out more about how modelling and imaging technologies help in locating the source of AF. Methodology There are currently 2 main methods of treating AF: electrical cardioversion and catheter ablation. For electrical cardioversion, an electric shock is delivered to a patient’s heart to restore the normal heart rhythm. For catheter ablation, radiofrequency energy or cryo energy is used to selectively destroy areas of heart tissue that cause the abnormal heart rhythm. However, both methods are unable to specifically pinpoint the exact origin of the erratic electrical signals and difficult to locate the catheter tip during …show more content…
However, due to lack of software that can automate the process, it may not be made available to other cardiologists easily. Moreover, more evaluation can be done on the effect of this technique on a larger group of patients. Its effectiveness in early forms like paroxysmal AF can be further investigated too. All in all, the technique has opened up a new area of exploration in the treatment of AF focusing on tracing of electrical signals and it bears great potential as a thorough AF source-locating