Success Stories: Mike Curtin

Mike Curtin, a 47 year-old pilot from California, had been living with a heart

arrhythmia for many years. But his form of

tachycardia -- rapid heart beat -- seemed to grow worse over time.

Eventually, Mike woke up in the middle of the night and found that his heart was beating at 200 beats per minute. This lasted three hours, and only subsided when he went to the ER and received a shot that helped to slow his heart down. He decided he needed treatment.

Mike's options were slim. Receiving a pacemaker would have ended his career as a pilot. And taking medications for it would have meant struggling with side effects, as well as the possibility that they might not be completely effective.

This is when Mike began researching the possibility of ablation -- destroying groups of cells in the heart that cause the irregular heartbeat. The standard ablation technique -- radio-frequency ablation -- posed certain side-effects and risks that made Mike uncomfortable.

Then he read about a new, low-risk method to cure tachycardia that was pioneered by an electrophysiologist at Sherman Hospital. Sherman was only one of two hospitals in the country to offer this procedure. Cryoablation freezes the problematic heart cells, and does not cause pain or discomfort to the patient during the freeze. It also poses a lower risk of complications and problems after the procedure. Mike wasted no time contacting Sherman's electrophysiology lab. Mike became the first patient at Sherman to undergo cryoablation. How did it turn out?

"I just came back from a backpacking trip. I hiked up to 9,000 feet, and never felt so much as a skip in my heart," he says. "I've never felt better."

Mike is back in the air, too. He started flying again three months after the procedure.