Hospital to perform remote-controlled heart operation

It comes six months after Dr Andre Ng, senior lecturer at Leicester University and consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Glenfield, carried out the first remote catheter ablation procedure using the Amigo Robotic Catheter System.

Ng will today use the robotic arm in combination with advanced 3D mapping to fix an irregular heart rhythm called atrial fibrillation (AF). The patient is a 63-year-old Derbyshire man.

AF is the commonest heart rhythm disturbance seen in clinical practice, with more than half a million sufferers in the UK. It also increases the risk of a person having a stroke by five times and doubles the risk of death.

Catheter ablation is carried out by hand, can take several hours and results can be variable. The robotic system is best suited for this type of ablation. Glenfield Hospital started ablation for AF, treating 25 patients in 2002, increasingly steadily to more than 200 in 2009.

Catheter ablation procedures involve inserting thin-wire catheters into the groin and up to the heart. Electrodes on the catheters help to identify the cause of the heart rhythm problem. Once identified, the doctor can place one of the catheters at the location of the problem and ablate the tissue.