Revelation after three decades of ablation therapy: two loops instead of a single re-entry loop drive atrial tachycardia

Abstract

Revelation after three decades of ablation therapy: two loops instead of a single re-entry loop drive atrial tachycardia There is an urgent need to better understand and localise the sources of cardiac arrhythmia in order to improve its treatment. SmartHeart proposes a radical new approach—applying network theory to study cardiac arrhythmia mechanisms. Network theory has myriad applications throughout biology, physics and social sciences. However, it has never been applied to the heart. In this proposal, we will apply network theory to clinical data of cardiac arrhythmia, backed up by computer simulations, to automatically detect the source of the arrhythmia for complex atrial tachycardia, atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. As we will identify possible ablation targets, the goal of this project is to improve the treatment for the patient.