Doctors & patients are saying about 'A-Fib.com'...

"A-Fib.com is a great web site for patients, that is unequaled by anything else out there."

Dr. Douglas L. Packer, MD, FHRS, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN

"Jill and I put you and your work in our prayers every night. What you do to help people through this [A-Fib] process is really incredible."

Jill and Steve Douglas, East Troy, WI

“I really appreciate all the information on your website as it allows me to be a better informed patient and to know what questions to ask my EP.

Faye Spencer, Boise, ID, April 2017

“I think your site has helped a lot of patients.”

Dr. Hugh G. Calkins, MD Johns Hopkins,
Baltimore, MD

Doctors & patients are saying about 'Beat Your A-Fib'...

"If I had [your book] 10 years ago, it would have saved me 8 years of hell.”

Roy Salmon, Patient, A-Fib Free,
Adelaide, Australia

"This book is incredibly complete and easy-to-understand for anybody. I certainly recommend it for patients who want to know more about atrial fibrillation than what they will learn from doctors...."

Pierre Jaïs, M.D. Professor of Cardiology, Haut-Lévêque Hospital, Bordeaux, France

"Dear Steve, I saw a patient this morning with your book [in hand] and highlights throughout. She loves it and finds it very useful to help her in dealing with atrial fibrillation."

Dr. Wilber Su,
Cavanaugh Heart Center, Phoenix, AZ

"...masterful. You managed to combine an encyclopedic compilation of information with the simplicity of presentation that enhances the delivery of the information to the reader. This is not an easy thing to do, but you have been very, very successful at it."

Ira David Levin, heart patient,
Rome, Italy

"Within the pages of Beat Your A-Fib, Dr. Steve Ryan, PhD, provides a comprehensive guide for persons seeking to find a cure for their Atrial Fibrillation."

Walter Kerwin, MD, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

Report: FIRM Mapping System—Should Ablation Patients Avoid It?

Published January 8, 2016

The FIRM mapping system was a hot topic at the last annual AF Symposium. In his presentation Dr. Ravi Mandapati compared data from his study of FIRM ablations performed at UCLA Medical Center to the CONFIRM clinical trial data published by Dr. Sanjiv Narayan, one of the inventors of the FIRM mapping system.

Topera-FIRMap catheter (three sizes)

Up to this point in time, everyone seemed to be jumping on the FIRM/Topera ‘bandwagon’ with very little critical analysis or understanding of how it worked.

As patients, we should now be skeptical of the FIRM system:

• It doesn’t map nearly ½ of the left atrium
• The FIRM mapping algorithms finds stable rotors that other research finds are not stable, and electrophysical characteristics that other research doesn’t confirm
• Results of ablating FIRM-identified rotor sites are relatively poor. (This is what should most concern us as patients.)

So, as an A-Fib patient, you may ask: “Should I now stay away from doctors or centers using the FIRM system?” Read my answer and my full 2015 AF Symposium report at Critical Analysis of the FIRM Mapping System.

For more background also see my 2014 AF Symposium report: ECGI vs. FIRM: Direct Comparison, Phase/Waveform Mapping.