Using radiofrequency energy to disconnect misbehaving muscle cells from the heart can treat the heart-rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation in some patients.

Atrial fibrillation is a very chaotic and irregular heartbeat that occurs in the upper chambers of the heart, called the atrium. While the heart-rhythm disturbances of atrial fibrillation are not themselves life-threatening, the condition does raise the risk that blood clots will form and possibly lead to a stroke.

The muscle "sleeves" that envelop the pulmonary veins -- blood vessels that carry oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart -- are frequently the source of these heart-rhythm abnormalities. Signals, or extra beats, originating from the muscle sleeves can trigger atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation can be treated with drugs or an electric jolt to shock the heart back into normal rhythm. Attempts have also been made to treat the condition by ablating, or destroying, some heart muscle cells and thus isolating the source of the extra beats from the rest of the heart. However, patients treated with this technique often require additional treatments.

Researchers note that past ablation attempts only targeted veins that were shown in diagnostic tests to be a source of abnormal heart rhythms. But these tests may not always identify source of the extra beats.

Because these extra heartbeats may originate from any of the four pulmonary veins, in the study they electrically isolated at least three of the four pulmonary veins and destroyed those cells with radioablation.

After 5 months of follow-up, 70% of patients with intermittent atrial fibrillation were free from recurrent irregular heartbeats without the need for an anti-arrhythmic drugs. An additional 13% of patients had greater than 90% improvement in their symptoms either without or with an anti-arrhythmic drug that was previously ineffective.

In patients with persistent atrial fibrillation -- meaning the condition had been present for months to years -- only 29% were either free of recurrent atrial fibrillation or had a significant improvement after 5 months of follow-up.

Circulation January 29, 2002;105

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Atrial fibrillation is a difficult challenge to correct, but killing electrical cells in the heart or the veins is in no way shape or form treating the cause of the problem. It is just one more example of traditional medicine using surgery to treat a symptom. The heart is easily influenced by input from the autonomic nervous system, or the part of the brain that controls breathing, digestion, and a variety of other automatic functions of the body. Emotional influences can significantly change one's heart rhythm. PVCs or PACs are other types of irregular heart rhythms that are typically far less dangerous than atrial fibrillation. PVCs are notoriously amenable to complete improvement with bioenergetic techniques. I have used EFT a number of times now to successfully eliminate those problems. Atrial fibrillation is a more complex and persistent problem that requires rigid application of the eating plan in addition to EFT. I have also used EFT to either significantly reduce the dangerous medications that a person is using for their atrial fibrillation or to completely eliminate it. If you are interested in finding out how you can learn EFT please go to the EFT Resource page to find a number of different options that are available. I hope to offer links to qualified clinicians in the near future once our new web site is deployed.