Ripple AT-Plus Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Ripple Mapping Guided Ablation for Atrial Tachycardia: The Ripple AT-Plus Study
IRAS ID
258758
Contact name
Prapa Kanagaratnam
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Atrial tachycardia is a fast, abnormal heart rhythm that causes patients troubling symptoms. Atrial tachycardia affects a large and growing number of patients. It commonly occurs following treatment for an equally common arrhythmia known as atrial fibrillation, but may also occur in anyone. Because atrial tachycardia rarely responds to medication-based treatment, catheter ablation is becoming a very common solution for suffering patients.
Catheter ablation is a minimally invasive procedure that allows areas of heart causing atrial tachycardia to be identified and treated. The procedure is performed with the patient in atrial tachycardia. During the procedure, electrical signals within the heart are recorded and interpreted. This allows doctors to find the area causing atrial tachycardia and treat it by passing energy down the wires and onto the heart (ablation).
Recording and interpreting electrical signals during the procedure is not straightforward. As a result, it may be difficult for doctors to accurately identify the best areas of heart to treat by ablation. In this situation, there may be a need to perform ablation at many sites.
At Imperial College, we have developed software, called Ripple Mapping, that makes the ablation process easier. We have already shown in previous randomised trials that Ripple Mapping makes the catheter ablation procedure faster and more likely to result in short term success as compared to other conventional methods. These benefits were largely due an ability to interpret the hearts electrical signals with more accuracy, by use of Ripple Mapping.
Because ablation is more targeted with Ripple Mapping, we believe it may influence the likelihood of atrial tachycardia coming back in the long term. Therefore, we wish to randomise patients to either a conventional ablation or a Ripple Mapping guided ablation and follow them over a year.
REC name
London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/0637
Date of REC Opinion
14 Jun 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion