To run in the Olympics takes years of training and plenty of heart, but what if your heart isn’t ticking quite like it should? Thanks to a novel technology, doctors at the Avera Heart Hospital can now offer a more efficient and more minimally invasive option to help patients keep their heartbeat in rhythm. For one local athlete, that means he can safely train for his own milestones.
He's conquered marathons and triathlons, so it's clear it takes a lot to slow Lucas DeWitt down. That is until recently.
“This past year, I started coaching cross-country, as an assistant coach in Spencer, and I was running more with the kids and while running, my breathing didn't seem quite right, so I knew something wasn't right. This is more than just feeling like you're getting older and I’ve run enough marathons to know that it just wasn't right,” said DeWitt.
Lucas also noticed his watch was alerting him to an irregular heartbeat, so his doctor referred him to the team at the Avera Heart Hospital for a closer look.
“It was after I had a heart monitor on for two weeks that Dr. Stanton called back, and he said, yeah, you've got A-Fib about 10% of the time," said DeWitt.
“Well, it's something that can sneak up on you, but then again, it's a situation where everything is normal until it's not,” said Christopher Stanton, MD, FACC, FHRS, an electrophysiologist with North Central Heart Institute.
“So really, what's happening when someone's having an abnormal heart rhythm is you've got areas of the heart that are firing, that are disrupting the normal heart rhythm. So we try to go in and target those areas that are causing problems to quiet those down so that the normal rhythm can resume,” said Jonathon Adams, MD, FACC, FHRS, an electrophysiologist with North Central Heart Institute.
Correcting atrial fibrillation typically starts with medications, but what made Lucas an interesting case is that his running habit and endurance training naturally lowered his heart rate, making him not a good candidate for traditional methods. Thankfully for Lucas, something new was just around the corner.
“I talked to the doctors and they said, You know, we'd really like to try this new procedure with you," said DeWitt.
“Pulse field ablation is a new energy source and tool for treatment of atrial fibrillation,” said Stanton.
“I would say it's one of the biggest advances in ablation technology in the last 25 years,” said Adams.
“The duration of the procedure is shorter. And use of the tool in patients is safer. We don't have some of the very challenging complications that we can end up using other tools,” Stanton said.
“Now they're able to deliver very short but high voltage impulses that disrupt the cell membrane and cause those cells to eventually become scar. So we're trying to get rid of the areas that are causing the problem so that they can no longer cause the problem,” correcting the irregular heartbeat while protecting the surrounding tissue, muscles, and organs, Adams said. The procedure itself hasn't changed, but the new technology has made it more efficient.
“It's amazing to me to think that 15 years ago when I started doing this, these procedures would take six or more hours and be fraught with risk. Now we can do this in a same-day setting with minimal access, minimally invasive in a procedure that takes generally less than an hour,” Stanton said.
“It was just amazing coming out of the procedure, how fast everything healed and how you're good to go real quick,” said DeWitt.
In fact, after a short time off his feet, Lucas was able to lace up his shoes and get back to what he enjoys most.
“Since the procedure, I’ve eased into it a little bit to kind of get it going because it doesn't seem like that's quite right, but yeah, feeling really, really good and planning on doing University of Okoboji triathlon. It won't be fast, but we'll finish it,” joked DeWitt.
And on July 20, two months after his procedure, Lucas did just that.
The Avera Heart Hospital was the first to offer pulse field ablation technology to patients in the Dakotas and Nebraska. Currently it is only being used for treatment of atrial fibrillation with the hope that the technology could be adapted for other heart rhythm issues in the future.
