Bryan Health performing new atrial fibrillation procedure

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Bryan East Medical Center is performing a newly approved heart surgery that it says has impressive results for patients with atrial fibrillation.

“It can radically improve their quality of life,” said Dr. Peter Gallagher, an electrophysiologist at Bryan East.

Over 12 million people are expected to be diagnosed with A-fib by the end of the decade.

Atrial fibrillation is when the upper chamber of a person’s heart beats in an abnormal rhythm.

A new faster, safer and potentially more effective procedure has come to America after being tested in Europe for a number of years, and Bryan East is on top of it.

It’s called pulsed field ablation, which uses a catheter to send short pulses of electricity to the problem spot down to the millimeter.

Bryan and a couple hospitals in Omaha are the only ones in the state to perform this procedure.