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Dr. Wilber Su
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VIDEO: Dr. Su - Supraventricular Tachycardia, What Are Treatment Options?

Dr. Su explains the treatment options for patients with supraventricular tachycardia/SVT.

Dr. Su:
So for the treatment of supraventricular tachycardia, essentially we are talking about abnormal rhythm arising in the atrium. So the first line of therapy, often is medication, and that may be changing because it used to be that the ablation sometimes becomes very dangerous for some people, and it’s often scary. But catheter-based ablation actually is so safe nowadays with all the tools we have, and the flip side is that it’s a curative procedure.

There are not too many things we can cure in medicine, and abnormal rhythm happens to be one of them. One has to weigh the risk and benefit, anything we do. The risk of medication is not benign; there are a lot of side effects to medication. Often that becomes lifelong therapy because as soon as we stop it, the abnormal rhythm will recur. We’re not getting to the problem, we’re just masking it with medication.

So with the ablation, what we are doing is trying to find out what is the cause of the issue in the heart and eliminating that abnormal cause.

Dr. Su, M.D., F.A.C.C.:
Dr. Wilber Su is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Cardiac Electrophysiology, and is on staff at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital, Maricopa County Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Center, and Banner Desert Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. He received his undergraduate degree with honors in biomedical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), and attended medical school at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. He also trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology. He is involved in ongoing studies on national trials to improve complex arrhythmia treatments and mentors electrophysiologists across the country on complex ablations and cardiac device implantation techniques. Dr. Su specializes in atrial fibrillation ablation, arrhythmia ablations, Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators (ICD) among other heart conditions and procedures.

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