Cardiac Electrophysiology
Cardiac Electrophysiology (CEP)
It is a modern medical technique of cardiac care in cardiology that focuses on the heart's electrical activities. This technique uses a minimally invasive (intra-cardiac) catheter recording spontaneous activities and cardiac responses to the programmed electrical stimulation - clinical cardiac electrophysiology.
Advantages of Cardiac Electrophysiology (CEP)
CEP helps
- Assess complex arrhythmias (all types of arrhythmia)
- Prevent potentially fatal sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation VF
- Elucidate categorized arrhythmic symptoms
- Evaluate abnormal electrocardiograms
- Assess risks of developing fatal arrhythmias in the future
- Design and apply particular treatments
These above procedures include therapeutic methods (typically radiofrequency ablation, or cryoablation) in addition to diagnostic and prognostic procedures. In modern days, this cardiac electrophysiology application helps assist cardiologists/interventionists in selecting the most perfect and specific regimen for a long-term treatment that best prevents or slows the development of ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF), and CEP has greatly played an important role in the therapeutic modalities used in this cardiological field including
- Antiarrhythmic drug therapy
- Implantation of pacemakers
- Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators
- Cardiac resynchronization therapy devices
How does Cardiac Electrophysiology (CEP) function?
Our heart muscles contain specialized cells capable of producing electrical impulses. In healthy hearts, these impulses spread in a predictable and firm pattern, causing the heart muscle to thoroughly contract and pump blood throughout the body. However, if you have a cardiac rhythmic disorder or arrhythmia, the electrical signals don't spread throughout the heart muscle as they normally do. Electrophysiology studies (EPS) are performed to test the electrical activity of your heart using specialized catheter tubes that can transmit electrical impulses, and with this method, it effectively enables electrophysiologists to see where the electrical signals in your heart start and travel so they can pinpoint the exact area of your heart that is the source of the problem, and determine where your arrhythmia or any myocardial issue takes place.
