Arrhythmias are among the most common disorders of the heart. Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is a common arrhythmia associated with significant morbidity. There are currently more than 2.5 million Americans suffering from AFib and there are about 160,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The lifetime risk for the development of AFib is estimated 25% for Americans older than 40. AFib can lead to angina, heart failure, and stroke. Treatment of AFib is essential for the patient suffering from severe and frequent episodes of these arrhythmias. Ablation catheters are used to treat both ventricular and supraventricular arrhythmia, and there is emerging evidence that the ablation catheter treatment of arrhythmias is curative compared with drug therapy and implant treatments which are not curative. The proposed EAP-based electrical micro-steerable catheter utilizes a breakthrough solid state actuator technology, invented by one of the founders of SPS, to manipulate the catheter position. The linear correspondence between the applied voltage and the dimension change in the EAP actuator enables precise control of the catheter tip and its force level, resulting in a significantly reduced procedure time with the benefit of a programmable operation capability. The ease of integration of the proposed actuation technology with the current catheter results in a very low cost device.
The development of advanced micro-steerable cardiac ablation catheter based on SPS proprietary electroactive polymers can significantly reduce the procedure time and cost to treat the atrial fibrillation. This will enable the wide accessibility and acceptance of the life-saving curative catheter ablation to millions of Americans threaded by cardiac arrhythmias.
