ATLANTA — Emory Healthcare electrophysiologist Neal Bhatia, MD, has developed a world’s first technique to treat complex heart arrhythmia, offering new hope to patients who have exhausted traditional treatment options. The clinical findings from the groundbreaking investigational study were presented at the Heart Rhythm Society conference this spring.

The novel technique, called VINTAGE (Ventricular Intramyocardial Navigation for Tachycardia Ablation Guided by Electrograms), allows clinicians to guide a steering wire directly into the muscle of a beating heart, creating a pathway for highly precise ablation.

"This new technique will help more patients who have had prior failed ablations to avoid recurrent defibrillator shocks or heart transplant, ultimately improving their quality of life and overall heart function," says Bhatia, who is also an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.

Standard treatments for complex arrhythmias typically rely on ethanol or needle ablation limited to the inner and outer surfaces of the heart wall. In contrast, through this clinical trial, VINTAGE provides direct access to the myocardium, the middle muscular layer of the heart, bypassing anatomical obstacles to deliver deep intramural lesions exactly where they are needed.

"While traditional surface ablation often struggles to reach deep-seated arrhythmic tissue, we found that VINTAGE allows us to target the root cause of the arrhythmia directly within the heart muscle, significantly reducing procedural risks and improving long-term outcomes."

During the investigational study, investigators performed 28 VINTAGE procedures across 24 patients, all of whom had previously experienced a failed conventional ablation procedure. The outcomes were highly promising:

• 92% of patients experienced an acute termination of their arrhythmia during the procedure.

• 80% of patients successfully reduced their cardiac medications.

Collaborative Foundation
The development and study of the VINTAGE technique were conducted in a highly successful, collaboration with Robert Lederman, MD, and Chris Bruce, MB, ChB, of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Following these successful initial findings, the study is transitioning into a formal clinical trial to expand upon this pioneering work in close connection with the NIH.