Renal Denervation Shows Surprising Promise in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation

The Valley Hospital Collaboration with State Research Institute of Circulation Pathology in Siberia Finds Treatment on Kidney Has Positive Impact on the Heart Cardiologists from The Valley Health System have collaborated with counterparts in Russia on research being electronically pre-published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Co-authors Jonathan Steinberg, M.D., and Suneet Mittal, M.D., of the hospital’s Arrhythmia Institute, studied the potential for renal denervation (RDN), an investigational therapy in the U.S., which is approved in Europe for hypertension, to treat atrial fibrillation (AF). Results demonstrated that RDN provided substantial incremental AF suppression after pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) in patients with symptomatic and refractory AF in the setting of drug-resistant hypertension. “While modest in size, this study demonstrates that by changing the nervous system balance of the kidney through renal denervation, we can have a dramatic impact on the heart rhythm,” explained Dr. Steinberg, director, Arrhythmia Institute at The Valley Health System in New York and New Jersey. “This research was conducted with concomitant AF ablation, but our goal is to offer renal denervation only, without PVI, in appropriate patients, which would offer an effective and less invasive procedure for patients who don’t respond to standard ablation.” The 27-patient, prospective, randomized, double-blind study showed that patients treated with PVI with RDN were observed to have significant reduction in systolic (from 181 ± 7 to 156 ± 5, p 0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (from 97 ± 6 to 87 ± 4, p