Dr. Sauer is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and the Director of Electrophysiology Laboratories at the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) in Aurora, Colorado.

Tell us about your medical background and how you came to work in the field of electrophysiology. What interested you about this field?
All of my education and training is from a single institution in Philadelphia — the University of Pennsylvania. I initially became aware of the field of electrophysiology while studying bioengineering as an undergraduate at Penn. In fact, it was electrophysiology that initially attracted me to the field of medicine as an engineering student. The idea that an implanted device could save a life was a foreign concept and almost seemed like science fiction to me. I never before recognized this aspect of medicine and thought that it offered so many more advantages over pharmaceutical or surgical strategies to treat disease or injury. Later as a medical student, I learned about catheter-based techniques to treat a variety of cardiac conditions, including arrhythmias. This combination of technology and dramatically effective results made electrophysiology a natural choice for me early on in my education.

Describe your role as Director of Electrophysiology Services at the University of Colorado Hospital as well as Director of the integrated electrophysiology program of the University of Colorado Denver. What is a typical week like for you?
University of Colorado Electrophysi-ology has four affiliated hospitals and clinics that serve as the sites for its clinical, research, and training programs. These hospitals are the University of Colorado Hospital; Denver Veterans Administration Medical Center, directed by Dr. Paul Varosy; Denver Health Medical Center, directed by Dr. Christopher Lowery; and St. Joseph Hospital, directed by Dr. Laurent Lewkowiez. Most of my time is spent on the clinical and administrative responsibilities pertaining to the clinical program at UCH and the fellowship training program. I also engage in several research projects. Although I have varied interests and responsibilities, during a typical week, you can always find me in the EP lab at some point in the day teaching fellows, pointing out an interesting phenomenon, or becoming involved in a challenging case.

Tell us about the new technology recently added to UCH’s EP labs. How has this changed your procedures or techniques?
Both electrophysiologists and patients have benefitted from the technology available in our EP labs, including biplane fluoroscopy, high-resolution intracardiac echocardiography, and electroanatomical mapping systems. We recently added Carto 3 (Biosense Webster, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company, Diamond Bar, CA), a new electroanatomical mapping system that will become more widely available later this year. This new system allows us to visualize multiple catheters without the need for fluoroscopy. In addition, we can use shells made from intracardiac echocardiography or a roving catheter to merge with a CT or MRI scan, greatly enhancing the precision of catheter ablation for all arrhythmias. For our complex ablations, we are using much less fluoroscopy, and can be more confident with regard to our understanding of cardiac anatomy, visualizing catheter contact in real time. For simple ablations, we are able to clearly define the anatomy of the slow pathway region or the cavotricuspid isthmus, even when we are not using the merge or intracardiac echocardiography functions.