Dealing with a heart arrythmia on her own became unsustainable for this woman

Beth Howard sat in her car on the side of the road for 30 minutes one day in March 2024, waiting for her heart rate to slow down so she could continue driving.

“I remember very clearly that it was March 1st last year,” she said. “I pulled over because I couldn’t get the arrhythmia (abnormal heartbeat) to stop and I remember thinking, ‘this is ridiculous, something has to change.’”

Howard had experienced bouts of rapid heartbeat for years and was always able to stop it using a self-help technique called the Valsalva maneuver.

“The rapid heartbeats usually stopped within a couple of seconds when I did this,” she said. “That’s how I stopped it for years.”

The arrythmia always started without notice and was not related to exercise, anxiety or fright, and would sometimes occur while she was asleep, she said.

A Chance Meeting Led to Treatment

Howard, who is the manager of annual giving for the Cape Cod Healthcare Foundation, met Elissa Thompson, MD, a Cape Cod Healthcare cardiologist, at an event a couple years ago and, in passing, told Dr. Thompson about her rapid heartbeats. Dr. Thompson offered to see Howard as a patient. After an evaluation, Howard was given a heart monitor to wear for a month to record her heart rate 24 hours a day.

“The results showed I had an electrical abnormality in my heart,” said Howard. “Dr. Thompson recommended I make an appointment to see Adam Mohmand-Borkowski, MD, PhD, FHRS, a Cape Cod Healthcare cardiac electrophysiologist, to find out my options for treatment.”

Dr. Mohmand-Borkowski gave her three options: he could perform a cardiac ablation, she could take medication to control the rapid heart rate, or she could continue doing the maneuver to stop it.

“I was afraid to have an ablation and I didn’t want to take medication for the rest of my life. So, I chose to continue doing the maneuver,” Howard said. “However, the rapid heart rate became more frequent and debilitating and that’s when I decided to have the cardiac ablation, especially after speaking with a couple of people who had it done. That was reassuring.”

Cardiac Ablation

“Beth had supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) and in her case, her heart rate was exceeding 200 beats per minute causing her to get light-headed,” said Dr. Mohmand-Borkowski. “This is why we offered her a cardiac ablation, which is a minimally invasive intravascular procedure where we introduce special catheters into the vein in the groin and feed them through the vein into the heart.”

“The first step in the procedure is doing an electrophysiologic study (EP study) using the catheters to stimulate different areas of the heart to understand the mechanism of the abnormal rhythm,” he said. “We can induce the abnormal rhythm and, once we do that, we can analyze it and identify the particular area responsible for it. We treated the area of tissue responsible for causing her arrhythmia with high-temperature radiofrequency ablation, which eliminated the tissue and eradicated the arrythmia.”

The success rate for this SVT cardiac ablation to treat a condition like Howard’s is 90-95 percent, according to Dr. Mohmand-Borkowski.

In addition to the SVT cardiac ablation, there are also cardiac ablations to treat other types of arrythmias, such as atrial fibrillation, premature ventricular complexes (PVCs), and ventricular tachycardia. Besides radiofrequency ablation, other ablation techniques can be used, such as cryoablation (a cold temperature), and a new procedure called pulsed-field ablation said Dr. Mohmand-Borkowski. Medications that can treat arrythmias include calcium channel blockers and beta blockers or more complex medications called antiarrhythmics.

A New Lease on Life

Howard said the cardiac ablation was “probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, the technology was incredible! While I was awake during the procedure, I had a sedative that helped keep me calm.”

Following a couple of days rest, she felt fine and she has not had any episodes of arrythmia since her procedure.

“Dr. Mohmand-Borkowski really improved my quality of life significantly and hopefully cured the arrythmia forever,” she said.