Dr Sandip Rungta Clinic

Heart ablation or cardiac ablation is a procedure done to treat irregular heartbeats or arrhythmias. It is performed by an interventional cardiologist, a doctor who specialises in doing procedures for heart problems and it involves threading long wires called catheters through a blood vessel into your heart. The irregular heartbeat is treated by delivering an electrical pulse using electrodes to specific areas of your heart.

Arrhythmias
A normal heart beats at a steady rate, but sometimes, your heart may beat too quickly, too slowly, or unevenly. These heart rhythm problems are called arrhythmias and one of the treatments for this heart problem is cardiac ablation. Other treatment modalities are medications and changes in lifestyle. Heart ablation is prescribed when the other treatments fail. Arrhythmias mostly happen in older people and in people who suffer from other heart problems like cardiomyopathy.

Here are answers to most frequently asked questions related to ablation

Who will benefit from heart ablation?
The beneficiaries include people who

• Suffer from arrhythmias that don’t respond to medicines
• Suffer from side effects from arrhythmia medicines
• Suffer from a specific kind of arrhythmia that respond very well to cardiac ablation
• Are at a high risk for cardiac arrest or other complications which can be fatal

Cardiac ablation is very helpful for patients who have certain kinds of arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, which cause fast heartbeats.

How to prepare for cardiac ablation?
You will have to undergo extensive tests to record your heart’s electrical activity and rhythm. Your doctor will ask and record whether you have any other disease like high BP and diabetes.

If you are a woman and pregnant, you must not get this procedure done as it involves radiation. You will not be allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight, the night before the procedure.

How is heart ablation done?

Heart ablations are done in a special room known as an electrophysiology laboratory. It usually takes three to six hours and is usually done under general anaesthesia or local anaesthesia with sedation.
The catheters are threaded either from your neck, groyne or arm into your heart. Your cardiologist also injects a special contrast dye to help him see areas of abnormal muscle in your heart. He then uses a catheter with an electrode at the tip to give radiofrequency energy to the weak heart muscle to correct your irregular heartbeat.
You may have to stay overnight after the procedure.

Risks associated

1. Bleeding
2. Blood clots
3. Damage to heart valves or arteries
4. The build-up of fluid around your heart
5. Heart attack
6. Infection

Inflammation of sac surrounding your heart or pericarditis You will have to be monitored regularly after ablation to check for problems in your heart beats.

A heart attack and Cardiac Arrest may sound like terms that have the same medical meaning. They are not. While a heart attack occurs when the flow of blood to the heart is blocked, a cardiac arrest occurs when the heart stops to beat. You might want to know the causes behind the conditions and the symptoms and signs that one may experience. Read on to know about them.

What is a heart attack and what is a cardiac arrest?
When the flow of blood towards the heart gets blocked, a heart attack occurs. This may be due to a clot in the arteries or plaque buildup on the walls of the arteries. A sudden cardiac arrest occurs when the affected individual's heart malfunctions as well as it stops to beat all of a sudden.

Thus, it is evident that heart attack is actually a circulation problem whereas cardiac arrest is an electrical problem. During a heart attack, blood rich in oxygen is not allowed to reach a particular part of the heart because of a blocked artery. If quick treatment is not done for reopening the blocked artery, then that specific section of the heart which receives nourishment from that artery tends to die.

In cardiac arrest, as the heart stops beating unexpectedly, so organs like brain, lungs, etc. also stop receiving blood. It results in a sudden fall in blood pressure as well as the circulatory system tends to collapse. Usually, the affected individual loses consciousness because the flow of blood to the brain decreases. Death might follow if emergency treatment is not carried out immediately.

Quite like the conditions are different, the symptoms are also different. Here are some of the most common symptoms of both heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest. It will assist you in understanding that both these health issues are different.

Symptoms of a heart attack:
Pressure or pain in abdomen or chest, trouble breathing, sweating, dizziness, chest tightening feeling, pain that spreads to arm or jaw, losing unconsciousness, heart palpitation, etc. are some of the basic signs. According to studies, nearly one-thirds of the heart attack patients do not undergo chest pain during heart attacks.

Particularly women experience atypical symptoms other than the ones that are mentioned above. Few of them include gastric pain, vomiting, nausea, breathing problem without any chest pain, getting unconscious, etc.

Symptoms of Cardiac Arrest:
Collapse, dizziness, trouble in breathing, chest pain, blue discoloration of face, etc. are the most common sudden cardiac arrest's signs. A huge number of people who experience cardiac arrest do not experience any symptoms at all.

Though both heart attack and cardiac arrest are linked to each other some way or the other, yet they are different. However, both the conditions need immediate medical assistance, an absence of which may prove fatal.