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Digital twin hearts deliver 100% success in arrhythmia trial
Researchers used patient-specific heart models to guide ablation in 10 ventricular tachycardia patients, and all remained free of sustained dangerous rhythms.
- On Wednesday, Johns Hopkins University researchers reported that "digital twins" of diseased hearts helped doctors treat ventricular tachycardia more effectively in a study of 10 patients.
- Ventricular tachycardia is a notoriously difficult-to-treat arrhythmia that requires doctors to spend hours under anesthesia performing trial-and-error catheter ablation, contributing to thousands of sudden cardiac deaths annually in the United States.
- Biomedical engineer Natalia Trayanova created customized ablation targets using MRI scans converted into three-dimensional simulations. "It's a very powerful tool for pre-procedural planning," Trayanova said, noting physicians "treat the digital twin before you treat the patient."
- Lead author and cardiologist Jonathan Chrispin reported the virtual models reduced procedure times from three hours to about 30 minutes, with most patients remaining free of sustained dangerous rhythms and no longer needing antiarrhythmic drug therapy.
- Cardiac electrophysiologist Babak Nazer of the University of Washington called the simulations "state-of-the-art," yet the Food and Drug Administration approved only this initial 10-patient trial, and researchers note much larger studies remain necessary.
23 Articles
23 Articles
Associated Press News
To fix a patient's irregular heartbeat, doctors first tested its digital 'twin'
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University are creating virtual replicas of patients’ hearts so they can test how to fix a life-threatening irregular heartbeat before treating the real organ.
Digital twin hearts deliver 100% success in arrhythmia trial
Working with "digital twins" of patients' hearts, doctors have improved cardiac ablation outcomes for patients with life-threatening arrhythmias. In the first clinical trials for cardiac digital twins technology, researchers at Johns Hopkins University created digital replicas of patients' hearts, then tested procedures on those twins before performing them on the real thing. Working with digital twins resulted in faster and significantly more a…
In the operating room, the margin of error of the cardiologist is not only measured in millimetres, but also in electrical impulses that are sometimes invisible to the human eye. Until now, treating a ventricular tachycardia by ablation (introducing a catheter through a vessel and applying energy) was, in many cases, a process of trial and error . Doctors sought the focus of arrhythmia while operating, a complex task that often ended in long pro…
A promising innovation in medicine is redefining the treatment of complex and potentially fatal cardiac arrhythmias. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have successfully developed and tested precise virtual replicas of patients' hearts, known as "digital twins," which have guided doctors in stopping dangerous irregular heartbeats. This approach represents a significant advance, applying a technology previously restricted to industry to offe…
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