A healthy heartbeat is the foundation of a healthy life. 
A specialty called electrophysiology (EP) has made important strides in diagnosing and treating malfunctions in the heart’s complex electrical system. An EP allows doctors to find abnormal sites inside the heart that may be causing serious arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms).
At the San Francisco Heart and Vascular Institute at Seton Medical Center, our new EP lab allows our heart specialists to perform minimally invasive tests to monitor electrical activity in the heart and to create a 3-D map of the heart’s electrical system.
The EP Lab is located in the Cath Lab and is equipped with bi-plane flat detector technology allowing two views of the heart at the same time. This digital technology increases the image quality and decreases the radiation dose. The lab also features real-time intra-cardiac mapping, intra-cardiac ultrasound and radio frequency ablations to treat arrhythmias.
An EP helps physicians diagnose heart problems more accurately, allowing them to choose the best type of treatment. An EP study is conducted for one or more of the following reasons:
- To diagnose the cause of symptoms, such as palpitations, lightheadedness, or fainting spells.
- To pinpoint the location of a known arrhythmia.
- To assess the severity of an arrhythmia and predict the risk of future cardiac event.
- To assess how well medications are working to control an arrhythmia.
- To decide whether an implantable device, such a pacemaker or defibrillator or a treatment procedure, such as catheter ablation is required.