Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

3D MRI Heart Imaging to Improve Treatment of Atrial Fibrillation

February 5, 2014 By University of Utah Health Sciences

A major step toward individualizing arrhythmia management

A University of Utah-led study for treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation (A-fib) provides strong clinical evidence for the use of 3D MRI to individualize disease management and improve outcomes.

Results of the Delayed-Enhancement MRI Determinant of Successful Radio-frequency Catheter Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation (DECAFF) study will be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Atrial fibrillation is a common arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat, which is a major cause of stroke, heart failure and death. For treatment, doctors have mostly relied on drugs, or more recently, on catheter ablation. Despite those two treatment options, outcomes remain mediocre mainly due to poor patient selection, says Nassir F. Marrouche, M.D., founder of the U’s interdisciplinary Comprehensive Arrhythmia Research & Management Center (CARMA) and associate professor of internal medicine at the University’s School of Medicine. “We’ve been treating A-fib based on patients’ symptoms, duration of arrhythmia and associated comorbidities. Instead we should be integrating the diseased, fibrotic heart tissue itself into our management plan.”

“Every cardiologist in the world knows that A-fib and atrial tissue disease are intertwined. But, until recently, we have been lacking noninvasive tools to define this relationship,” he says. “We at CARMA have developed a significant breakthrough in the way A-fib is managed.”

The DECAFF study built on innovative work from CARMA, which invented the technology enabling heart tissue imaging with MRI. With these images, physicians can assess the extent of the disease using a novel staging system similar to the ones developed for cancer. “This is a major step for individualizing arrhythmia management.”

Conducted in partnership with 15 major medical centers across the United States, Europe, and Australia, Marrouche’s landmark study demonstrated that the amount of atrial injury can effectively predict whether patients were likely to benefit from A-fib catheter ablation procedure. Using the enhanced MRI and the Utah Staging System, the hearts of 329 patients were scanned and staged on a scale of 1-4 before undergoing ablation and procedure outcomes were assessed at follow-up.

What Marrouche and his worldwide study partners found reflected early published findings from CARMA at the U of U: that those with less extensive fibrotic tissue had a greater chance of responding to ablative treatment.

According to the data, patients with less than 10 percent left atrial wall fibrosis (Utah Stage 1) showed good outcomes with ablation therapy while those with greater than 30 percent fibrosis (Stage 4) experienced significantly higher failure rates.

Marrouche believes the study findings will encourage a shift in the way physicians treat patients with atrial fibrillation, specifically by integrating MRI into their A-fib management protocols.

“MRI scanning of heart tissue is more and more becoming a screening test to predict people at risk for arrhythmias and its associated complications like stroke and heart failure,” he says. He also believes atrial disease-causing arrhythmias should be screened for just like cancers and other common diseases.

For more information, visit University of Utah Health Sciences.

Related Articles Read More >

Dexcom One
How Dexcom’s portfolio goes beyond highly-anticipated next-gen G7
A portrait of Stryker executive Siddarth Satish
How Stryker includes users for product design in the digital age
A Medtronic HVAD pump opened up to show the inner workings
Medtronic investigates HVAD pump welds after patient deaths
Galien Foundation 2022 nominees
18 of the world’s most innovative medical technologies

DeviceTalks Weekly.

May 20, 2022
DeviceTalks Boston Post-Game – Editors’ Top Moments, Insulet’s Eric Benjamin on future of Omnipod 5
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech