CRMC Introduces New Atrial Fibrillation Treatment

Cookeville Regional Medical Center successfully treated an Atrial Fibrillation patient using a new form of therapy.

CRMC Director of Electro Physiology Dr. Mark Wathen said the new treatment has been long overdue as the common practice of heating or freezing scar tissue has been used since 1991. Wathen said the new treatment uses an electrical field pulse to shock scar tissue and has proven to be better for the patients.

“The problem with the older approach is that it would also injure nearby tissues like lung tissue for example or nerve tissue,” Wathen said. “This is advantageous because it does not injure the lung or nerves and so it is a much safer procedure.”

Wathen said CRMC is the first hospital in the state of Tennessee to offer the treatment to patients. Wathen said strokes are a big problem in our area. Wathen said the new treatment will have a positive impact on those patients across our region.

“Atrial Fibrillation probably causes at least a third maybe a half of all strokes,” Wathen said. “So any effective treatment for AFib should show stroke reduction down the line.”Wathen said the risk for Atrial Fibrillation catheter ablation is now around 3.1 percent rather than the previous 5.1 percent.

Wathen said it was a long process for CRMC to be able to offer the treatment. Wathen said this treatment is about five years in the making and first started overseas but is now making its way to the United States.

“We were fortunate to be the first to start using this as a non-investigational true direct therapy approach,” Wathen said. “Especially combined with a three-dimensional mapping system that helps us visualize the catheter inside the heart and help to design different techniques for actually how to accomplish a successful treatment.”