Personalised heart simulations could improve cardiac care

News

UK developed technology that simulates the workings of individual patients' hearts could boost treatment of a common cardiac condition that affects a million people in the UK, researchers have claimed.

Personalised heart simulations

Working with £93,000 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) the team at King's College London has taken the first steps towards developing models designed to optimise catheter ablation, a procedure used to correct atrial fibrillation, a condition which causes abnormal heart rhythms.

Atrial fibrillation - which affects the left atrium (or upper chamber) of the heart - reduces blood supply, leading to dizziness, breathlessness and fatigue, and increases the risk of a stroke. Every year, around 10,000 people in the UK have a catheter inserted in order to treat the condition using radiofrequency energy. But the procedure is not always effective, there is a small risk of it causing a stroke or death, and the condition often recurs.

The personalised computer models aim to increase the effectiveness of this procedure by making it possible to explore, in advance, different strategies for its use geared to the specific needs of individual patients.

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