It’s been a busy month for our discussion group! Take a look at the new questions and responses; if you would like to respond, please email us at eplabdigest@hotmail.com or visit us on the Web at www.eplabdigest.com (click on the email discussion group link). Remember, when posting or responding to the discussion group, please let us know if you would like your name, location, and/or email address listed as well. We look forward to hearing from you!

Our Spotlight Interviews have been a popular monthly feature since EP Lab Digest started in 2001. In this special feature, we check back with one of our previously highlighted EP labs to see how they have changed since first being profiled.

I have been a registered nurse (RN) for 26 years and have worked in the cath lab for the past 14 years. During this time, I have had the opportunity to wear a lot of different shoes and be on all sides of the fence. I have been a patient, a parent, a spouse and a nurse. It has been quite an eye-opening experience, and lately I have been thinking about how each role feels and how, as a professional, my responses affect others.

In this interview with Michael O. Sweeney, MD from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he discusses a case in which he was able to provide scientific evidence of an anniversary reaction, which occurs when sudden cardiac arrest takes place on or near the date of a past traumatic event. In his patient’s case, the ventricular arrhythmia was prevented with an ICD. Read more about this remarkable case.

Epstein LaRue, RN, BS, is the author of four published novels, including her latest award-winning Highway Hypodermics series of books on travel nursing. She has been published in Nursing2004 and was named a 2005 Travel Nurse of the Year by Healthcare Traveler magazine.

Dan Dan, MD, is an associate with Cardiovascular Disease Specialists at Piedmont Hospital and co-director of Cardiovascular Research at Piedmont Hospital’s Fuqua Cardiac Center in Atlanta, Georgia. In this interview, he describes his success rate with cryoablation.

In the next installment of the EP 101 series, author Dr. Liem discusses the mechanisms and management of ventricular tachycardia (VT).

Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) has emerged in the last several years as an important strategy in the treatment of this arrhythmia.¹ With the expected rise in the number of AF patients as the population ages, the role of catheter ablation is expected to become more prominent in the future. There are many techniques in AF ablation, ranging from anatomical ablations encircling the pulmonary veins and making linear ablation lesions, as well as those techniques that target specific electrophysiologic signals such as pulmonary vein potentials or fractionated electrograms, or those that attempt modification of the vagal innervation into the heart.^2–4 Despite the differences in techniques, it is clear that the shared goal is to achieve adequate tissue ablation as safely and quickly as possible, and in doing so, increase the success rate of AF ablation.

In this interview with Patty Lemel, co-founder of Project ADAM, she talks about her son Adam, and why it was important to start this non-profit organization in his memory.

The purpose of the FIX-HF-5 study is to determine whether treatment with the OPTIMIZER^™ System is safe and effective in patients with moderate to severe heart failure symptoms. In this interview, we speak with Dr. Daniel Burkhoff to get an update about the study.