Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Center

In our Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Center, we offer groundbreaking AFib ablation surgery in our innovative hybrid treatment rooms. These procedures are called “hybrid” because they combine electrophysiology (using a catheter inside the heart) with heart surgery – without opening the chest to pinpoint and destroy AFib-causing tissue.

Working as teams, our doctors use catheters to destroy problematic tissue both on the inside and outside of your heart. This procedure is proving much more effective than traditional catheter ablation, which destroys damaged tissue on just the interior of the heart.

Within these hybrid ORs, our specialists – electrophysiologists along with cardiologists, heart surgeons and others – can perform minimally invasive catheter treatments and surgical procedures at the same time. For you, that means faster, safer treatment that requires less time in the hospital.

To help your heart automatically maintain a predictable rhythm, we’ll permanently implant a battery-powered pacemaker into your chest. With a heart pacemaker in place, your symptoms of heart arrhythmias, such as tiredness and syncope (fainting), may significantly decrease.

Many pacemakers have one or two wires, called leads, that connect to your heart and help you maintain a regular heartbeat. A single chamber pacemaker uses one lead connected to either an upper or lower chamber of your heart while a dual chamber implant connects to both chambers.

For some people, we can also use new leadless (wireless) pacemakers. These work well for people who have a slow heart rate and need a pacemaker to help only in a single heart chamber.

For serious arrhythmias that can cause your heart to stop, we can implant a pacemaker that includes an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, which sends a small electrical charge to your heart to restore a normal heart rhythm.

We also can implant a biventricular pacemaker to keep both lower chambers of your heart pumping at the same time and syncing them with the upper chambers. Your doctor might suggest this if your heart failure makes the chambers contract at different times, creating an inefficient heartbeat that stresses your heart and can leave you tired and short of breath. We use a biventricular pacemaker in cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT).

Your doctor may recommend cardiac ablation if medicine doesn’t control your heart rhythm problem or you’re in danger of experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. Ablation uses either gentle burning or freezing to treat small areas of heart muscle that are causing your abnormal heart rhythm.

You might be a candidate for an ablation procedure if you have AFib symptoms and medications haven’t worked for you, or if you experience side effects from arrhythmia medicines.

Left atrial appendage closure devices are used in treatments for stroke reduction. These devices filter out clots to prevent stroke.

Your doctor might recommend this device if you can’t take blood thinner meds because of allergies or other reactions, or if you’ve taken those meds and had bleeding problems.

All our AFib ablations include pulmonary vein isolation catheter ablation, which helps to electrically isolate the areas of the heart that are creating the AFib.

Pulmonary vein isolation ablation has a very high success rate for patients who have paroxysmal AFib – a type of AFib that comes and goes. Afterward, many people remain AFib-free with relatively low risk.