St. Jude Medical (STJ) recently received approval from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW), including approval for reimbursement, for its Therapy Cool Path Ablation Catheter. This approval marks St. Jude’s first entry into the Japanese irrigated catheter ablation market and the company expects to launch more products in future.
Cardiac arrhythmia, which is an irregular heart beat that impairs the heart’s ability to pump blood, is treated with cardiac ablation catheters. St. Jude’s Therapy Cool Path Ablation Catheter is a flexible tube of small diameter that delivers radiofrequency energy to specific cardiac tissues in order to create small scars and lesions that interrupt abnormal electrical signals that lead to irregular heart rhythms.
The Therapy Cool Path Ablation Catheter’s irrigation ability facilitates regulation of temperature that improves both the safety and effectiveness of ablation, which in turn is expected to expand the usage of ablation therapy. It is designed to cool the ablation catheter in order to mitigate risks arising from the heat of the radiofrequency energy, such as coagulation of blood or charring, as the quantum of heat required to create a scar must be regulated against the temperature of the tissue.
Irrigation is also intended to facilitate the creation of deeper lesions as the saline from the catheter helps to cool both the tissue and the tip of the catheter. The larger lesions prevent arrhythmia, which can be at a depth within the heart tissue, by treating the region causing abnormal heart beat.
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