Alcohol septal ablation (ASA, TASH, Sigwart procedure) is a percutaneous, minimally-invasive treatment performed by an interventional cardiologist to relieve symptoms and improve functional status in severely symptomatic patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) who meet strict clinical, anatomic and physiologic selection criteria. In carefully selected patients, when performed by an experienced interventional cardiologist, the procedure is successful in relieving symptoms in over 90% of patients.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a condition of the heart muscle which grows abnormally thick, in the absence of a physiologic cause such as hypertension (high blood pressure) or aortic valve disease. In a large subset of patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, thickening of the heart muscle in a particular part of the interventricular septum causes obstruction to blood being ejected from the left ventricle.
Alcohol septal ablation is a technique designed to reduce the obstruction to blood being ejected from the heart; the technique creates a small controlled heart attack, killing the area of heart muscle responsible for the obstruction, and eventually causing it to become less thick.
Read more about Alcohol Septal Ablation: History, Technique, Outcomes
Famous quotes containing the word alcohol:
“No power on earth or above the bottomless pit has such influence to terrorize and make cowards of men as the liquor power. Satan could not have fallen on a more potent instrument with which to thrall the world. Alcohol is king!”
—Eliza “Mother” Stewart (1816–c. 1908)