Targeted radiation therapy might be a safer way to treat a potentially dangerous heart rate problem, a new study says.
Radiation therapy treated ventricular tachycardia as well as a standard but complicated procedure called catheter ablation, researchers reported Monday in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics.
At the same time, fewer patients treated with radiation died or experienced serious side effects, compared to catheter ablation, results from the small-scale study show.
"For patients who do not respond to traditional therapies and are at high risk of complications, noninvasive radiation may be a safer alternative to repeating an invasive catheter ablation procedure," said lead researcher Dr. Shannon Jiang, a radiation oncology resident at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
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