Patient Stories: Heart

Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center

From Zero to a 60-Second Freefall: Catheter RFA Changes a Ventricular Tachycardia Patient's Life

Because of its origin in the lower ventricles, ventricular tachycardia is the most dangerous of all cardiac arrhythmias. Rapid beating can interfere with the heart's ability to pump an adequate blood supply through the body, resulting in sudden cardiac death.

Anthony was in high school when a visit to his family doctor for strep throat resulted in a diagnosis of arrhythmia and referral to a cardiologist. "My life changed almost overnight," Anthony says. "I've always been very active. I played high school basketball and baseball. After my diagnosis, the doctor told me I'd have to quit playing sports. I spent the next year and a half in and out of the hospital — five or six visits — trying different medications. Finally, a pediatrician referred me to Dr. Dougherty."

Anne Dougherty, MD, an electrophysiologist at the Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center (TMC), was able to pinpoint Anthony's problem and find a medication that worked. "I was stable on Sotalol, but I understood from the beginning that I'd be on medication for the rest of my life."
   

In the spring of 2001, Anthony saw Dougherty for a checkup. "I needed an extended prescription because I was going abroad for five months to study at Texas A&M's school in Italy," he says. "Dr. Dougherty said she had a new procedure. I said, let's do it."

"Catheter radiofrequency ablation has a success rate of more than 90 percent in patients who qualify for the procedure," says Dougherty, who is a professor of internal medicine at The University of Texas (UT) Medical School at Houston. The cardiologist uses fluoroscopy to guide a thin, flexible catheter through a blood vessel to the heart cells causing the arrhythmia. Radiofrequency energy emitted from an electrode on the catheter's tip destroys the abnormal cells.

"Anthony's particular arrhythmia was idiopathic ventricular tachycardia, which is unusual in the absence of structural heart disease," she says. "His was even more rare because of its unusual site of origin in the right ventricular inflow tract — most idiopathics arise from the right ventricular outflow tract. And because it was not reproducible with pacing in the cath lab, it would have been nearly impossible to ablate before the advent of newer 3-D imaging programs."

Anthony was up walking the evening after the procedure; five days later he was in Italy. "About two months after my surgery, I went skydiving with some friends in the Alps. We jumped out of a helicopter at 12,000 feet with a 60-second freefall. Before my surgery I couldn't even ride roller coasters – too much of an adrenaline rush would have been dangerous."

In 2003, Anthony completed a triathlon with a 25-mile bike ride, 600-meter swim and a 5K run. In 2005, he rode the Houston-to-Austin MS150. "After Dr. Dougherty finally healed me, I took full advantage of it," he says. "I had some catching up to do."