{"id":881610,"date":"2026-10-14T04:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T04:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/881610\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T04:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T04:34:13","slug":"ellis-medicine-first-in-capital-region-to-offer-new-pulse-field-ablation-for-a-fib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/881610\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellis Medicine first in Capital Region to offer new pulse field ablation for A-fib"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ellis Medicine has become the first health care facility in the Capital Region to offer a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cardiovascular.abbott\/us\/en\/hcp\/products\/electrophysiology\/ablation-technology\/pulse-field-ablation\/volt-pfa.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">newer form of pulse field ablation, called Volt,<\/a> to treat atrial fibrillation, giving doctors a new tool as they anticipate AFib cases will continue rising year over year.<\/p>\n<p>The technology is now being used on patients at Ellis Medicine in Schenectady. Dr. Robert Joy, a cardiologist at Ellis, said the updated approach improves the procedure in several ways. \u201cIt makes the procedures simpler. They don&#8217;t take as long and safer. And we think basically just works better,\u201d Joy said.<\/p>\n<p>Atrial fibrillation is an irregular rhythm in the top chamber of the heart and can cause symptoms including shortness of breath, lightheadedness, dizziness or a racing heart. Doctors also associate AFib with a higher risk of stroke and heart failure.<\/p>\n<p>Joy said pulse field ablation targets areas in the heart that trigger AFib using high-voltage pulses. \u201cThe high-voltage pulses actually make these subcellular holes in the heart cell membrane so those cells die, which is our intent. And they lose their electrical properties or their ability to fire off and provoke the AFib,\u201d Joy said.<\/p>\n<p>Ellis doctors have used the technology on about ten patients in the last two weeks. Ellis Medicine Chief Operating Officer Chris Jordan said this proves just how important it was to upgrade procedures. \u201cAFib, we&#8217;re seeing a higher prevalence year-over-year off AFib in our communities. We&#8217;re projecting somewhere around five to ten percent increase year-over-year in AFib,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n<p>Administrators said the rollout also reflects continued investment in cardiology services at Ellis <a href=\"https:\/\/cbs6albany.com\/news\/local\/ellis-medicine-set-to-host-community-forum-on-future-of-schenectady-health-care\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">amid ongoing litigation with St. Peter\u2019s and broader questions about the future of cardiology at the hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll the other noise that&#8217;s happening in the community around lawsuits and everything else really a secondary to the fact that we Continue to invest in services that we believe are critical for our community and critical for our patients,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n<p>Doctors said the procedure takes about an hour and patients go home the same day. For comparison, about 20 years ago, when doctors first began using pulse field ablation for AFib, procedures could take six or seven hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ellis Medicine has become the first health care facility in the Capital Region to offer a newer form&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-881610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}