Freezing at the His Bundle

Prior to 1980, the only method to treat cardiac arrhythmias besides anti-arrhythmic drug therapy was open-heart surgery, that involved either dissecting or freezing the arrhythmic focus with a hand-held metal probe. Soon thereafter, early reports of percutaneously performed cardiac ablation were published that marked the beginning of a new era in the field of cardiac electrophysiology (EP). As our understanding of EP and ablation physics continues to evolve, remarkable advancements have been made over the last 30 years in ablation technology moving from direct-current energy in the early 1980s, to radio-frequency (RF) ablation, to the more recent cryoablation in the last decade.