Advanced Cardiac Mapping
Advanced Cardiac Mapping
A technique for creating a schematic of the heart, which is used to target and ablate electrically mischievous zones.Technique A multi-electrode catheter is guided into the ventricle; once inside, its balloon is inflated, allowing the electrodes on the mesh to maintain their configuration. The catheter is gently poked around to record the heart's electrical activity and the data is fed into a computer. The recording system simultaneously picks up electrical impulses from more than 3,000 points within the ventricle; these data are used to create a 3D map of the heart's electrical activity; once mapped, the culprit zone may be selectively destroyed by radio-frequency catheter ablation, or antiarrhythmics may be given.