Noninvasive Radiation Therapy Halts Deadly Heart Rhythm (nytimes.com)

schwit1 shares a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The patients were gravely ill, their hearts scarred by infections or heart attacks. In each, the electrical system that maintains a regular heartbeat had been short-circuited. They suffered frequent bursts of rapid heartbeats, which can end in sudden death. The condition kills an estimated 325,000 Americans each year, the most common cause of death in this country. And these people had exhausted all conventional treatments. So researchers at Washington University in St. Louis offered the patients something experimental: short bursts of radiation aimed at their hearts in an effort to obliterate the cells that were causing the electrical malfunctions. Results in the first five patients were published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the experiment seems to have worked -- offering hope to similar patients everywhere who have had no alternatives except a heart transplant. The treatment requires weeks to take full effect, so it cannot be used for cardiac patients who need immediate help. And the method must be studied in larger groups of patients over longer times, an effort that has already begun.

Comments

Re:Big pharma to shut this down

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a very good predictor of heart attack: the calcium score.
Done with a CT scanner that's synchronized to the heart beat, it gives the reader the opportunity to examine the coronary arteries for calcium deposits and give an to give an estimate of the risk of a heart attack.

Why isn't this widely adopted, instead of cholesterol and blood pressure examinations?
Because it predicts a bit too well.
Unnecessary statins and stent procedures are way too profitable to let go...

Re:Big pharma to shut this down

[Chewbacon]

That's plumbing, this is electricity. Good predictor for arrythmias: being alive. You are either born with it, or you get old enough to develop it. Sure, there are factors that correlate with getting it sooner, but you still get something eventually whether it's SVT or VT.

But what's the long-term prognosis?

[dgatwood]

Unfortunately, the last sentence hints that this was a short-term study. I'm a little skeptical that a long-term study will be nearly as positive.

Cardiac ablation techniques have been used for treating atrial fibrillation for many years now. The problem is that after a few years, the heart finds new ways to route those bad signals through itself, and the fibrillation comes right back. I kind of expect the same thing to happen with ablation for v-tach.