AP19-00991 Abstract View

Introduction : Radiofrequency (RF) ablation of cardiac arrhythmias is associated with a risk of stroke or silent brain lesions detected on MRI despite peri and intraprocedural anticoagulation. These result from thermal coagulum and microbubble formation at the ablation site. We previously demonstrated the potential benefit of a novel “hood” device that can contain thermal coagulum and microbubbles at the catheter-tissue interface which can thereby decrease the rate of embolization (Figure1A). In this study, we aim to demonstrate the safety of this device in chronic in-vivo animal studies. We hypothesize that ablation using the hood device is not associated with increased risk of stroke, brain infarcts and silent brain lesions detected on MRI.