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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.
I think you're an idiot with typical idiot ignorance of the world as it is.
Tachycardia is treated primarily, with Metroprolol Tartate. This has been the case since the ancient greeks. You go on to contradict your own premise by implying it would cause (costly) cancer. This is a net win by big pharma in every way you can look at it. Who do you think funded the research? Please stay in your basement, moron. The adults might have something to talk about here.
A spot-radiation treatment is a much more costly and risky procedure than a (remaining) lifetime of beta blockers? Probably. I wouldn't risk it, as a heart patient, since there's far fewer people with ventral fib than atrial fib. Like cadaver/porcine heart valves, this looks like a specialized solution to a larger problem that is being editorialized to imply a general solution.
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...
I work for a medical device company and make 3D electro-anatomical maps for electrophysiologists. I'm really curious how you can map a heart without actually touching the endocardium.
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.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
"A spot-radiation treatment is a much more costly and risky procedure than a (remaining) lifetime of beta blockers? Probably."
It is more costly initially because there are so few Centers offering it. This is not your Daddy's Radiotherapy, done with Electron Linacs delivering X-Rays, or 60Co Sources delivering Gammas. Unfortunately the Delivery System is barely mentioned; they just say "Radiation" and mention a dose of 25Gy. But the pinpoint precision mentioned and the lack of damage to surrounding tissue implies Bragg Peak Radiotherapy using Ions. (Typically Protons, but Alphas and Heavy Ions have been used as well.)
BPR is quick, not surgically invasive, and utterly painless. First developed at the 184" Cyclotron decades back, BPR depends on an obscure property of Accelerated Ions; they give up most of their Energy at the end of their paths in Matter. So Ions can go through tissue, slow down a bit, and BANG! right where they are needed, at the Bragg Peak. Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy uses Real-Time Imaging and multiple Ports to zap just the Lesions or Tumors on such things as a beating Heart, or an AVM in the Brain.
I am not up on the recent advances here; when I was involved in Beam Delivery years back, our Subjects were already Terminal. To put it bluntly, they were Guinea Pigs. (I frankly couldn't take the pressure, and went back into Spectroscopy instead.)
Scale this up, and may almost be an Assembly Line affair, somewhat like LASIK is now.
There is no conspiracy, only cost. A CT scan sets the insurance back anywhere from $700-2500 and scheduling it is rather limited and requires at least 3-5 people to be involved. Reading your blood pressure costs $50, a blood test perhaps $150 in the high end and is rather routine can be done by a trained monkey.
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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.
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I did a six week rotation at Barnes-Jewish (where Wash U does their RadOnc treatments) for my Radiation Therapy degree last December / January and witnessed one of these being done on an Edge machine. It's the most refined version of Varian's linear accelerators that they commonly use for Radiosurgery. It's on-board CT is really high resolution and nice gating capabilities (ability to turn it on only when the target area is in the right position) to allow for pretty precise delivery. I believe an additional EKG component was added to the CT based gating to ensure the radiation delivery was timed with the heart beat. Alternately, they have a ViewRay in the RadOnc department which has real-time MRI capabilities which should be able to do similar guidance.
The article clearly stipulates what radiation and device was used.
It is a standard Trubeam linac (Varian, Palo Alto) with Cone beam CT. Which is currently the most installed linac in American RT centers. So not extremely expensive and part of the standard machinery. So no bragg peaks in sight. I would think twice of doing this with a proton machine. (BTW I am a medical physicist and do this for a living for the last 28 years.). So a single treatment which depending on the country is between $5,000 to $25,000 . This using the equipment already available in most centers. So this is indeed SBRT, fortunately the pin point accuracy and planning has changed in the years so we are much better. BTW I never considered our patients to be guinae pigs.