New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that radiation therapy can reprogram heart muscle cells to what appears to be a younger state, fixing electrical problems that cause a life-threatening arrhythmia without the need for a long-used, invasive procedure.
In that invasive procedure — catheter ablation — a catheter is threaded into the heart, and the tissue that triggers the life-threatening irregular heart rhythm — ventricular tachycardia — is burned, creating scars that block the errant signals.
