NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) – A recent technological milestone could be the answer for thousands of patients across the Lowcountry and South Carolina suffering from life-altering heart conditions.

Trident Medical Center was one of the first centers in the Carolinas to implement a modified version of pulsed-field ablation, which is often used to treat atrial fibrillation.

The procedure will be available to patients after national clinical trials and an approval stamp from the Food and Drug Administration.

Dr. Frank Cuoco said the new procedure could reduce surgery time to less than an hour and be less invasive than the original procedure.

“There’s no scarring, no fever, no coldness, no inflammation, and it gets better quickly. I’ll rest at home for a few days, but I’ll be back to normal activity in four or five days,” Cuoco says.

The new procedure uses a catheter device that expands and contracts to deliver short bursts of electricity to targeted areas of the heart. This causes the cells to become holed and shriveled up, causing the symptoms associated with A-fib.

The original procedure uses extreme temperatures to treat the problem, which can sometimes cause damage and scarring to surrounding areas of the body.

A-fib is one of the most common forms of cardiac arrhythmia, a condition in which the heart beats too fast, too slow, or has an irregular heart rate. This can lead to blood clots, increasing your risk of stroke, heart failure, or heart-related complications. A-fib is a chronic disease that affects thousands of people in the United States.

“You can prevent it from happening again. You can prevent the symptoms,” Cuoco says. “I think if you take those risks and complexities from a factor of a thousand to a factor of a million, it changes what’s available.”

Cuoco said most people who undergo the procedure can go home the same day and return to their normal lives within four to five days.

The first person to receive treatment was a 54-year-old woman. Trident Medical Center plans to cover two more surgeries on Monday alone.

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