Although surgery can help a patient who is suffering from irregular heartbeats avoid heart failure, the technique burns through diseased parts of the heart and occasionally destroys healthy tissue.
When healthy tissue is destroyed, patients can suffer from worse heart problems and occasionally die from the surgery. The problems associated with the procedure motivated U researcher Nassir Marrouche to spend 16 years working on a less evasive procedure. He spent three of those years modifying what an MRI machine reads to help surgeons see the healthy tissue and not accidentally burn through it.
“The (procedure) can kill people,” Marrouche said. “That’s why I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years, to see what happens in the heart.”
Marrouche came to the U two years ago to finish his work on an MRI machine that can view soft tissue in the upper chambers of the heart8212;a breakthrough technique.
“(The) MRI isn’t widely used for this,” said Nathan Burgon, a researcher in Marrouche’s lab. “No one has really done it. That’s why this is so groundbreaking.”
Most surgeons performing the procedure on patients use a CAT scan to view the heart after surgery, but can’t view the healthy or diseased tissue as easily. Burgon said the modified MRI machine helps Marrouche conduct the procedure and avoid pushing the catheter through the heart or causing blood clots.
The procedure involves a surgeon inserting a catheter and pushing it up to the left and right atria of the heart. Burgon said the physician conducting the procedure has mapping systems that show the progression of the catheter through the heart during surgery, but the maps can’t differentiate between healthy and diseased tissue.
“There are complications coming with any procedure,” Burgon said. “And for this one, you could actually poke through the heart. That’s why we look at MRIs. There could be a blood clot that could get stuck somewhere and cause a stroke.”
Marrouche said he came to the U because of its well-known work on MRI machines during the past 20 years. He said the U’s team has not focused on the upper chambers of the heart before, but now different researchers are united to work together on new research.
Besides creating fewer surgical complications, the new procedure will attract more patients with heart problems to the U.
“We perform up to 15 of those (procedures) a week,” Marrouche said. “Regular practice does about one a week. The reason why: we have 45 of our patients come past the Mississippi. Few physicians can do this procedure.”