Heart stopper.

When X-rays were first discovered little over a century ago, it became an instant cure-all. But it wasn’t long before people started to question if the ulcerations and cancers were really worth the hair removal. The pendulum swung fast and hard such that in the past several decades therapeutic radiation has been reserved almost exclusively for the treatment of life-threatening malignancies. But what if X-rays really are the answer to more, and we just lacked the technology to best use them? Well, physicians at Washington University think they’ve got it. They’re using advanced cardiac imaging and ECG mapping to identify the source of ventricular tachycardia and successfully ablate it with a single dose of 25 Gy using pretty standard stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) techniques. The results are so impressive that their n=5 series got a full-length NEJM pub--because, in case you didn’t catch it, they’re fixing V-tach completely non-invasively. Which is a HUGE advantage over the current standard ablation via catheterization. And what do we mean by “fixing”? The authors compared number of V-tach episodes over 15 patient-months prior to treatment with 46 patient-months beginning 6 weeks after treatment (the time window estimated to see maximal effect): those numbers were 6577 versus 4. That’s right, 4. Hold on to your therapeutic radiation pendulum because its getting ready to swing.