ShareThisDoctors at Oklahoma University's Medical Center have helped pioneer a less invasive surgery to correct a common heart condition.
The thoracoscopic ablation may cure a disorder of the heart's electrical system that causes abnormal heart rhythm. Atrial fibrillation affects more than 3 million Americans and can increase risk of stroke or heart failure.
While some patients benefit from medications to stabilize their heart rhythm, others opt for surgery to ablate, or destroy, heart tissue that causes the abnormal electrical activity.
OU surgeons say the new surgical technique is less invasive, with smaller incisions and faster recovery. They performed their first thoracoscopic ablation surgery this summer on Suzanne Cannon of Oklahoma City.
"It feels like a fish jumping around your chest," said Cannon of her bouts of fibrillation. "It is very scary and I would get light-headed and short of breath and have to lie down."
Cannon tried several medications after her diagnosis three years ago but suffered debilitating side effects including allergic reactions, extreme fatigue and vomiting.
The professional counselor couldn't keep up her work schedule and changed doctors several times looking for new treatments before referral to the OU Heart Rhythm Institute. She had her surgery there July 29, just weeks after cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Marvin Peyton went to Amsterdam to learn the new thoracoscopic technique.
Peyton said the technique was developed in part by OU electrophysiologists, who collaborated with scientists worldwide to map the heart's complex electrical system.
Cannon's cardiologist, Dr. Deborah Lockwood, said the new surgery replaces 4-inch incisions on each side of the chest with smaller one-inch holes to guide instruments through the ribs and to the heart. The surgeon then creates precise scars on the heart to block the faulty electrical impulses that cause the heart to beat irregularly.
"For most people it's a permanent cure," Lockwood said.
Cannon said she's had no abnormal rhythms since the surgery.
"It has given me my life back," Cannon said. "I now have the energy to be myself. Before, I was swimming underwater."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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