Overview
- Johns Hopkins researchers reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine that patient-specific computer heart models safely guided treatment for ventricular tachycardia.
- The team built each model from high-resolution MRI, simulated how electrical waves moved through damaged tissue, and exported the predicted ablation targets to the lab’s mapping system.
- Guided procedures finished far faster, dropping from about three hours to roughly 30 minutes, and doctors could not re-trigger the dangerous rhythm at the end of each case.
- During follow-up ranging from months to years, all 10 patients remained free of sustained arrhythmias, with two brief early episodes corrected by implanted defibrillators and most patients stopping antiarrhythmic drugs.
- The FDA permitted use of the technology for this small series, and the investigators are launching multicenter studies and trials in atrial fibrillation as outside experts call for broader validation.