While he had used ethanol to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy before, to use it on Aldom was a last resort. "It got to the point where this poor man was like, 'please shut it off and let me die.'"Įthanol ablation works in the same way in that it also selectively destroys heart tissue, but it is more commonly used to treat hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart muscle is thick or "bulky," Johnson said. "It was complicated by the fact that had severe damage to his heart already," Johnson said. This prevents the tissue from continuing to produce the abnormal rhythm.īut Johnson said his colleagues had already tried that technique on Aldom, who had also previously endured heart attacks, without success - scar tissue that forms after heart attacks can reject the electrical treatment. Typically, a radio frequency catheter ablation is the treatment choice for someone with VT. A radio frequency catheter is an electrical probe that is threaded into the heart and uses low-voltage electricity to kill the heart tissue around the area causing the arrhythmia. "While it sounds like a very barbaric treatment, it was a very rewarding one, very high risk." " was at a point where he felt he had no other option and was kind of facing death," Johnson said. What was noteworthy about Johnson's procedure was that he had never used ethanol to treat VT before, nor had it ever been done in that part of the United Kingdom. It may seem like a story lifted out of "Pulp Fiction," but treating VT with ethanol, though rare, is an accepted method that has been used for years. "He's got a lot of life to live," Johnson said. VT, which starts in the lower two chambers of the heart - the ventricles - can be life-threatening if it goes untreated. Tom Johnson, who carried out the procedure at the Bristol Heart Institute Hospital in Bristol, England, said Ronald Aldom, 77, was doing "fantastically well" after Johnson and his team used pure ethanol to treat Aldom's rapid heartbeat, a condition called ventricular tachycardia, or VT, about six weeks ago. 25, 2012 — - A cardiologist in England gained international attention when he used an unconventional procedure - a shot of basic alcohol to the heart - to stop an unusual cardio rhythm in an elderly patient.ĭr.
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