Physicians with California Pacific Medical Center are among the first in the nation to use a new advanced mapping technology to help treat patients suffering from debilitating and potentially dangerous heart rhythm disorders.
The technology, the newly FDA-approved CARTO® 3 Navigation System, uses a three-dimensional mapping system to enable doctors to quickly and accurately maneuver within the complex anatomy of the heart. This system will enable physicians to more effectively treat a wide range of cardiac arrhythmias or irregular heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation, or AFIB, a problem that affects more than 3 million Americans, and ventricular tachycardia, or VT, a potentially life-threatening heart rhythm.
"This could dramatically improve our ability to help patients with atrial fibrillation," says Dr. Steven Hao, an electrophysiologist with California Pacific Medical Center's Atrial Fibrillation and Arrhythmia program in San Francisco, and one of the first physicians in the U.S. to use the CARTO® 3.
In AFIB the heart's two upper chambers beat erratically causing an irregular and often rapid heart rate. About 15 percent of strokes occur in people with AFIB.