Kate Galbreath
Daily Egyptian
Two surgeons from SIUC are practicing a new open-heart surgery
technique that would alleviate some of the dangerous side affects of
the procedure previously used to cure atrial fibrillation.
Dr. Joseph Rubelowsky and Dr. Ken Saum work as a two-person surgical
team to perform a revised version of the maze procedure, which requires
the surgeon to cut the atrium of the heart into small pieces and suture
it back together to produce scars that carry electrical signals.
Instead, the two are using either hot or cold burning to make the desired scars.
"The purpose of doing it is to cure people of atrium fibrillation," Rubelowsky said.
Atrial fibrillation is a heart disorder that occurs when the regular
pumping action of the atrium that sprays blood from the atrium into the
ventricle weakens, resulting in two main problems.
The first problem is that blood cannot circulate the body as well as
normal, and the second is the pooling of the blood that is unable to be
pumped by the weak atrium in the chamber.
Rubelowsky, a cardiac surgeon, is one of the team of two surgeons who
has been performing the surgery for the past three months. He
said the circulation difficulty is not always a problem unless the
person is particularly active.
"If you're sitting around watching TV, it won't make much of a problem," he said.
However, the pooling blood leads to clotting and raises the potential of a stroke, because the clot should travel to the brain.
Rubelowsky said the maze procedure was pioneered by a St. Louis-area
surgeon but is being redesignd because of the high death rate and
lengthy healing time associated.
During the surgery, the heart is stopped and covered in a potassium
solution. Due to of the sensitivity of brain tissue, the heart cannot
be stopped for very long.
Scarring is the desired result because the scars create pathways for
electrical impulses to travel through, which makes the atrium able to
contract effectively.
Other techniques, such as taking blood thinners, can be tricky because
a balance must be found between overly runny blood, which fails to clot
when cut, and thicker blood that will pool and clot in the atrium,
Rubelowsky said.
The next surgery is scheduled for Friday, and the freezing technique
will be used. The two surgeons are comparing data between freezing and
microwaving scarring to determine which procedure is more effective.
After Friday, they will perform 10 procedures using microwaves and then
10 more using freezing, also called cryo, so they can compare the
results of each type of procedure.
"We're kind of just doing this research on our own," he said. "Cryo might be easier to use because it's a smaller probe."
Rubelowsky and Saum work with a specialized surgical team based at Carbondale Memorial Hospital.
Reporter Kate Galbreath can be reached at
kate_galbreath@dailyegyptian.com
