ablation

[nobhill]

What are the different types of ablation?

[tom_h]

If you're asking about what technologies are used for cardiac catheter ablation, I believe there are two different types employed; RF and cryogenic ablation.

RF ablation uses bursts of high frequency RF energy, quite literally a focused antenna to heat and burn tissue.  Cryogenic ablation, aka. cryo, uses extremely cold gas to destroy tissue by freezing it.

Each method has its good and bad points.  Cryo ablation features a "try before you buy" opportunity.  The tissue can be deactivated by chilling it but not completely frozen so a suspected path can be looked at before completely destroying the area.  The problem with cryo is that it doesn't penetrate deep enough, so the conductive area can reactivate again.  RF ablation offers just one chance, so they have to be pretty certain the targeted area is where the problem is.  the advantage to RF ablation is the if burns deep enough to prevent the reactivation of the path later on.

I believe both technologies can be directed using steerable magnetic catheter tips by means of a joystick.  While this is fairly recent technology, many electrophysiologists rely on hand manipulated control of the catheters, even being able to feel the heart wall through resistance feedback.

[Artaud]

These may help:

http://www.hrsonline.org/Patient-Resources/Treatment/Catheter-Ablation/Types-of-Ablations

http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Heart-Disease/Successful-Ablations/show/251710