The New 2024 STS Guidelines for the Surgical Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation!
Dr. HelenMari Merritt is a distinguished Cardiac surgeon at Methodist Physicians Clinic in Omaha, Nebraska and specializes in the treatment of atrial fibrillation. She recently moderated the much anticipated Atrial Fibrillation Session at the 60th Annual 2024 STS Meetingin San Antonio, TX where the newest STS Guidelines for the Surgical Management of Atrial Fibrillation were presented. We discuss these new guidelines and more in this episode!
Postoperative Atrial Fibrillation in Mitral Valve Surgery is NOT benign!
Dr. Whitney Fu from the prestigious University of Michigan is the principal author of an outstanding paper recently published in JTCVS entitled, “Postoperative atrial fibrillation in mitral valve surgery is not benign.” We discuss the important findings of this very revealing paper and shed some light on the often under-appreciated entity of POAF and its detrimental effects on post-MVR patient outcomes.
Does Surgical Ablation offer additional benefit over Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion?
Dr. Hunter Mehaffey is an outstanding Cardiac Surgeon and Clinical Researcher at the West Virginia University. He recently presented at the AATS 2023 meeting and published in JTCVS a large Medicare analysis of over 100,000 cardiac surgery patients with pre-existing AF in attempts to answer the question if surgical ablation confers additional clinical advantage over LAAO alone. This is definitely worth a listen!
Prophylactic Ablation to Prevent POAF! Does it work?
Dr. Charles Willekes and I discuss his recently reported randomized control study evaluating the safety and effectiveness of prophylactic bilateral pulmonary vein isolation in preventing post-operative atrial fibrillation. We also discuss our recent prophylactic posterior wall isolation technique to prevent POAF. Lots of new and intriguing data on this episode !!!
Robotic Enhanced Convergent Approach & #DEI STS 2023 Presidential Address
Ali Syed is a brave medical student who not only is at the forefront of Hybrid Ablation approaches as a member of the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Robotic Enhanced Convergent Plus team but also a #DEI advocate who shares his insight on the STS 2023 Presidential address.
A Hybrid Team Approach for Atrial Fibrillation
In this episode I describe our recent study revealing our results of a Hybrid team approach for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. I cover our hybrid technique, why we separate each stage, which lesions we perform and how our approach has changed over time. Most importantly I share how effective and safe this team approach has been in now nearly 1,000 patients!
LAALA Study - How effective is an AtriClip?
In this episode I describe our recent LAALA study - Left atrial appendage ligation using the AtriClip Device: Single-Center study of device safety and efficacy. The basic question we were trying to answer was does the AtriClip work? In order to answer this question we asked 100 patients to come back to Saint Helena Hospital to have a TEE performed at least 1 year after their AtriClip had been placed. Listen to the episode to learn how well the AtriClip performed!
Robotic Maze Surgery
Dr. Vinay Badhwar, Gordon F. Murray Professor and Chair, Department of Cardiovascular & Thoracic Surgery at West Virginia University, shares with us the remarkable results of the Robotic-assisted Cryothermic Cox Maze for Persistent Atrial Fibrillation and gives us a sneak peak of possible upcoming changes to the new surgical ablation and left atrial appendage management guidelines.
Medicare Cuts!!! (Again???)
Dr. Brett Gidney is a cardiac electrophysiologist leading the charge to reform Medicare payments to EPs. He practices throughout the central coast of California from Thousand Oaks up to Santa Maria, including mainly at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, CA. He is board certified in clinical cardiac electrophysiology focusing on complex cardiac arrhythmia management and clinical faculty at UCLA. We discuss the drastic proposed Medicare cuts that are set to devalue AF ablation once again!!!
CAST-AF 2022!
Dr. Bradley Knight, Professor of Cardiology at Northwestern University & Co-Director of the upcoming CAST-AF 2022 meeting being held on August 26-27th in Chicago, and I review the exciting topics to be presented at the meeting including PFA, the DECAAF Study, Left atrial appendage occlusion devices, the CONVERGE hybrid approach and then finish with a great conversation about the current state of EP resident/fellow training at Northwestern University.
Dementia and Atrial Fibrillation
Dr. Jared Bunch is a world renown Electrophysiologist and Clinical researcher. His latest work highlights the devastating relationship between Atrial fibrillation and Dementia. Find out more about how young people with Afib are at increased risk of dementia and much more on this episode of the All Things Afib Podcast!
Heart Failure and Atrial Fibrillation
Dr. Ali Khiabani from Washington University in St. Louis, MO discusses his recent paper about heart failure (specifically tachycardia mediated cardiomyopathy) and atrial fibrillation and how patients can be effectively treated with a Cox-Maze IV surgery. We also discuss the current state of Afib training in an expert center like Washington University under the leadership of an expert world renown surgeon, Dr. Ralph Damiano.
Early Rhythm Control Therapy - the EAST-AFNET 4 Trial
Dr. Tom Tadros an Electrophysiologist from Harvard Medical School - The Brigham & Women’s Hospital discusses the landmark EAST-AFNET 4 study which highlights the importance of early-rhythm control therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation.
Arrhythmia 101: Ventricular Tachycardia
The first in a new series, Arrhythmia 101 tackles electrophysiology subject matters outside of atrial fibrillation. In this episode we discuss the fundamentals of Ventricular tachycardia (VT) with VT expert Dr. Ashkan Ehdaie from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA.
Alcohol and Atrial Fibrillation
Does a glass of wine cause atrial fibrillation? Dr. Gregory Marcus is a world renown researcher and clinical electrophysiologist at UCSF and is an expert in the field of alcohol and atrial fibrillation. Dr. Marcus gives us his latest research findings and guidance on alcohol consumption and cardiovascular health.
The Converge IDE Trial
Dr. Christian Shults Cardiothoracic Surgeon and co-author of the Converge IDE trial shares his experience with the Convergent Hybrid Procedure and the results of the Converge IDE trial.
The Patient Experience with Atrial Fibrillation & StopAFib.org
Mellanie True Hills - CEO & Founder of StopAFib.org shares her own patient experience with atrial fibrillation and how StopAFib.org helps thousands of patients each year.
How Much Afib is Enough to Cause a Stroke?
Dr. Thomas Dewland is an accomplished Electrophysiologist at UC-San Francisco and he discusses “How Much Afib in Enough to Cause a Stroke?”
Cryoballoon Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation
Dr. Arash Aryana has published some of the most impactful studies on Cryotherapy for atrial fibrillation, he joins us in this episode to explain the advantages of Cryotherapy and the PiVoTAL-IDE trial.