The doctors of the Federal Center have mastered the cryoablation technology for treating an atrial fibrillation during open and minimally invasive heart operations. Before that, the Center has used cryoablation only for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias, using the method of inserting a catheter into the artery.
On September 29-30, the Center had the first series of operations with the correction of mitral heart disease with concurrent surgical treatment of an atrial fibrillation using the AtriCure cryodestructor. The head of the Center for New Surgical Technologies (FSBI "National Medical Research Center named after E.N. Meshalkin" of the Ministry of Health of Russia), Doctor of Medical Sciences Alexander Bogachev-Prokofiev demonstrated the capabilities of the device with both standard and mini-invasive access. With the example of their colleague from Novosibirsk, doctors of the Astrakhan Federal Center mastered this technology in open operations. Thus, the new technique for prosthetics of the mitral valve in combination with mammary coronary shunting (imposition of a shunt between the internal thoracic and coronary artery) and biatrial cryoablation was successfully applied by the head of the Heart surgery unit, a cardiovascular surgeon Dmitry Kozmin. Until now, conducting combined operations at the Center required a radiofrequency ablation technique, which has some limitations in the mini-access to the mitral valve.
"With the introduction of cryotherapy, we will be able to provide our patients with an effective and safe method of surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation during heart operations, including minimally invasive ones," says Dmitry Kozmin.
