Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: Paul J. Wang (Medicine - Cardiovascular Medicine)

“Guiding Mechanism For Epicardial Ablation Element in Catheter Ablation”

Over five million people in the U.S. suffer from abnormal heart rhythms termed atrial fibrillation (AF). Although ablation therapy can relieve the electrical issues that underlie AF, most patients will suffer recurrence because the lesions created by current techniques are incomplete. To solve these issues, Dr. Wang and Dr. Babakhanian are developing a catheter solution that performs ablation from both sides of the heart and creates full-thickness ablations across the heart tissue for higher single procedure treatment rate. Angelina’s project will involve helping to design the guiding mechanism used to dissect the tissue layers on the epicardial surface, to allow insertion of the epicardial ablation element due to difficulties reaching targets around left pulmonary veins.