In vitro model development for pulsed-field ablation treatment of atrial fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation is the most common type of cardiac arrhythmias in humans, mostly based on hyperexcitation of specific areas in the atrium that results in dyssynchronous atrial contraction, leading to severe consequences such as heart failure and stroke. Among the current treatment options, catheter-based ablation is used to isolate and destroy the abnormal tissue in the heart that promotes atrial fibrillation and has shown to be a good alternative to anti-arrhythmic pharmacological treatment. However, due to the large number of parameters involved, the selection and optimization of a good in vitro model is essential before translating the treatment to clinical trials. To this aim, this project focuses on the development of three in vitro culture models to be used as ablation testing platforms and the information that they can provide, indicating their potential as models in different stages of the treatment testing. The models presented are connected so that the results of the simpler model will influence the parameter decision of more complex models, reducing the parameter range while increasing the physiological resemblance to the real cardiac tissue. This study concludes by highlighting the potential of irreversible electroporation as a treatment for atrial fibrillation and the valuable information that can be obtained from these models.

Publisher

NUI Galway

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IE

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Collections

University of Galway Theses (Research Masters Theses)