Alcohol Ablation: A Procedure for Severe Cases of HCM or Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy

For people with severe HCM or Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, doctors may advise their patients to go through a procedure called Alcohol Ablation. Alcohol Ablation is a non-surgical procedure that is used of the gradient of the heart is at high levels, to where everyday movement is very difficult due to breathing and chest pain. The gradient is the thickness and stiffness of the muscle that is obstructing the flow of blood in and out of the heart.

The way the procedure works is by a small catheter tube being inserted in the artery in your right leg and pushed up slowly into your heart and to the artery where the obstruction is. They then push a small amount of pure alcohol into this area, blocking the outflow with a tiny balloon that is controlled by the catheter. The alcohol relaxes and deadens this area of obstruction, without having to surgically go in a cut out the muscle. What the alcohol actually does is cause a heart attack in a specified area of the heart. This causes damage and deadening to that area. After a short time due to the damage that obstruction area will actually thin out. Technically this is just a controlled heart attack.

During the procedure most patients feel chest pain and rapid heart beat. There is also a higher chance of needing a pacemaker or defibrillator once done with the procedure, due to weakening a portion of the heart muscle.

Alcohol Ablation's first procedure was overseas in Great Britain back in 1994. Very experimental, yet very successful trials have brought it to the United States. However still to this day there are very few hospitals that will perform this procedure, because they still deem it in its experimental stages.

Out of the patients that have this procedure 90% of them have a lessening of the chest pain and irregular heart rhythms they were experiencing prior to the ablation. The recovery time on this procedure is also minimal at a mere 3 day hospital stay and than a few weeks off work. Most patients after this surgery feel an immediate change within 24 hours of the procedure.

Over a few years the heart will start to recover from a lifetimes worth of struggling with HCM, because now it doesn't have to push too hard to make everything pump normally. However there are many unknowns about the long term effects since this procedure is so new there is not enough information available. However with HCM there is a possibility that it will come back in other portions of the heart, which you cannot than have this procedure repeated. Unfortunately we wont know for many years how truly successful this new and dangerous procedure can be.