Brussels hospital achieves a first in cardiology

Let’s break that down into human language: a patient with a heart rate of over 100 beats per minute (so, quite fast) caused by irregular electrical signals in the heart was treated at a Brussels university hospital. Doctors there were able to treat this patient in a non-conventional way, borrowed from a very different kind of medicine altogether. 

The typical treatment for ventricular tachycardia would be ablation with a catheter, which entails destroying irregularly functioning heart tissue through small tubes inserted into blood vessels to reach the heart. Doesn’t sound like a fun Tuesday morning, does it? Enter a technique borrowed from cancer treatment known as stereotaxic radiotherapy. 

The technique allows doctors to act with minute precision in real time, using radiation to target very specific tissue. This doesn’t involve the use of any catheters, so it’s considered non-invasive, and the non-invasive curing of tachycardia is a first. As so often, Belgians are paving the way. 

We wish the patient a swift and full recovery, and congratulations to the doctors for this medical advancement.