Heart arrhythmia treatment: Jiřina (63) was saved by the Affera system

Mrs. Jiřina’s problems started about 5 years ago. “I didn’t go up the stairs, I had to rest after a few climbs. I was short of breath and often tired. I used to like to walk fast, but after my heart started racing, I didn’t do it anymore,” a sympathetic woman calculates her difficulties, saying that the examination confirmed cardiac arrhythmia.

“Initially, it helped me when they performed a cardioversion once a year in the hospital, in layman’s terms they “threw” me with a defibrillator,” Jiřina explains her treatment. Then this therapy no longer worked and her cardiologist sent her to Na Homolce Hospital.

There, Professor Petr Neužil’s team performed the new Affera procedure on her, which eliminates these heart rhythm problems without the need for surgery. “On Wednesday, January 24, I went to the gym and the next day I went home. I feel fine and I already cooked for the whole family at the weekend,” the proud grandmother of four concludes her story with a smile.

The unique system treats cardiac arrhythmias

Two important Prague hospitals joined forces and developed a revolutionary system that treats cardiac arrhythmias. These are among the most common heart diseases. While in healthy people these heart rhythm disturbances do not pose an immediate threat to life, in patients with heart disease, for example after a myocardial infarction, they can be life-threatening.

For several years, doctors from Prague’s IKEM and Na Homolce Hospital have been involved in a system called Affera, which eliminates these heart rhythm problems without the need for surgery.

How is it going?

Special thin and flexible electrodes (catheters) with a grid electrode at the end are inserted into the groin or neck. It is a spherical net which, when expanded, has a diameter of 9 millimeters and has 9 microelectrodes on it. These sense the electrical signals of the heart and the temperature of the surrounding tissue. This catheter creates a three-dimensional map of the heart cavity, and an electrode uses current to perform ablation (destruction of diseased tissue).

Safe and effective

The advantage of the Cardiocenter IKEM prof. MD Josef Kautzner pointed out that the use of this new method is completely safe and effective: “Just for comparison, a regular ablation can take 30 minutes and sometimes it’s difficult to complete it due to swelling. It takes 1-2 minutes using Affery.”

The new system gives great hope to patients with heart disease, with a large scar after a heart attack or heart inflammation. “We all want catheter ablations to be as effective and safe as possible. The new method – pulsed field ablation – uses ultra-short pulses of nanosecond duration with high voltage, which practically do not create a thermal effect. As part of clinical trials, we performed more than 200 interventions, which is the largest number of patients treated in this way worldwide. It is an important step towards significantly more effective treatment of cardiac arrhythmias,” says the head of the Cardiology Department of Na Homolce Hospital, prof. Petr Neužil.

Cardiologist Petr Neužil

Author: Mária Rušinová

What is catheter ablation?

It is a minimally invasive procedure in which a catheter is led through the blood vessels to the heart. The catheter supplies energy to parts of the heart muscle, normalizing electrical signals and restoring the heart to a normal, healthy rhythm.

You know that…

… is the Czech Republic one of the leading places in the world in the number of ablations? Thanks to new non-thermal technology, the situation will improve even further.