Medical Breakthroughs: FDA approves new treatments for heart health
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Atrial Fibrillation, or A-Fib, is the most common type of heart arrhythmia.
More than 12 million people in the United States live with it. If not treated, it can lead to blood clots and even stroke.
There are treatments for A-Fib, but experts say they can come with risks and side effects. Now a new FDA approved treatment is helping hearts get back to beat.
Michael Copley, with his dog Bo, spends a lot of time perfecting his pickleball game.
"It's a great combination of fun and competitiveness," Copley said.
But Copley, a man who could volley for hours, started to become winded just going up a flight of stairs.
"I took my pulse, and it was fast, and so that was something new for me," Copley said.
That was his first sign of A-Fib.
After a failed traditional ablation procedure, Copley was one of the first to have farapulse, pulse field ablation.
"It's like a smart bomb for heart muscle cells," Scripps Clinic Cardiologist and Electrophysiologist Dr. Douglas Gibson said.
Gibson says unlike thermal ablation that uses a catheter to deliver extreme heat or cold to zap heart cells back into rhythm, farapulse uses electrical signals.
"The farapulse is non-thermal. It doesn't heat up or freeze tissue. We deliver electric fields at the tissue, and the way it kills is by opening up pores and cell membranes," Gibson said.
Killing the cell from the inside out, with less risk of damaging surrounding tissue and cells.
"When you treat a piece of heart muscle with this technology, just the cardiac cells are deleted, the nerves, the blood vessels, the esophagus, which sits right behind the heart, all of that is untouchable," Gibson said.
And now, a year after the procedure, Copley is back on the court, A-Fib free.
For the first time, recent studies have shown 100 percent of patients are A-Fib free 90 days after the procedure. Compare that to thermal ablation that works in about 70 percent of the patients.
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