Heart Arrhythmia – Yale Medicine Explains
August 23, 2023Transcript
- 00:05- The heart has very specific electrical pathways,
- 00:09essentially electrical wiring,
- 00:11very similar to what you would have in a house.
- 00:14The impulse goes down those electrical wires
- 00:17and those wires basically plug into the different cells of the heart
- 00:23and when the impulse gets to those cells,
- 00:26it depolarizes them in a sense, it gives them a little jolt
- 00:29and this causes the cells to contract
- 00:32and ultimately this causes the heart to contract
- 00:34and pump the blood into the remainder of the body.
- 00:40It's very important for the heart
- 00:42to have a very uniform and consistent rhythm.
- 00:52Just as in a house, you could have a room
- 00:55that has faulty electricity, when you turn on the switch,
- 00:59instead of getting light,
- 01:00you get a light bulb that flickers,
- 01:02you could get short-circuiting in different chambers of the heart
- 01:06and what that manifests as, is a racing or an irregularity
- 01:11in the electrical function of the heart.
- 01:14This is what an arrhythmia is.
- 01:15It is a disturbance in the electricity of the heart.
- 01:20The short circuit and the lower chambers of the heart
- 01:23can cause the heart to race very, very fast
- 01:27up to the point that the heart can suddenly stop.
- 01:32There are also arrhythmias that occur
- 01:34in the upper chambers of the heart,
- 01:37but instead of being localized to one location,
- 01:40there are multiple different circuits
- 01:41all going on at the same time.
- 01:44And this is what atrial fibrillation is.
- 01:48The symptoms primarily involve palpitations.
- 01:52Feeling that the heart is skipping,
- 01:54feeling that the heart is very erratic.
- 01:56Often they involve feeling very tired
- 01:59and fatigue and unable to do regular activities
- 02:03and therefore it becomes important
- 02:05to alleviate the symptoms and improving the quality of life.
- 02:14The advent of ablation procedures for atrial fibrillation
- 02:18has really revolutionized the field.
- 02:21We go in with catheters through the vein into the heart,
- 02:24the catheter has a magnetic tip.
- 02:27It allows us to detect electricity.
- 02:29So we're able to measure through the tip of that catheter,
- 02:32where those short circuits are.
- 02:34We can localize them and then cauterize them.
- 02:38We take a lot of pride at Yale in refining our technology
- 02:43and our techniques for the management of atrial fibrillation
- 02:47and it really has been a great ride.
- 02:50It's been nothing but revolutionary
- 02:52in terms of our ability to treat arrhythmias,
- 02:55to restore normal rhythm in cases that in the past,
- 02:59we would never have dreamed that we'd be able to.