St. Mary's Opens EP Lab, a New Dimension in Heart Care

RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- St. Mary’s recently opened a new, state-of-the art laboratory to solve the complex problems that can arise in the heart’s electrical system, particularly after a heart attack. The Electrophysiology Laboratory, or EP Lab, helps doctors treat people with irregular heart beats, or arrhythmias.

According to St. Mary’s Electrophysiologist Dr. Rajiv Handa, dangerous arrhythmias often precede sudden cardiac death, the most common cause of death in people who have had heart attacks.

“It has become clear that most of these deaths are caused by a life-threatening rhythm of the heart that can be prevented by conducting EP studies utilizing many new procedures now available, such as an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD),” said Dr. Handa.

The EP Lab is equipped with the most up-to-date technology and specially-trained staff. It offers therapies like bi-ventricular pacing, in which a special kind of pacemaker is implanted in people with congestive heart failure (CHF). The treatment gives CHF sufferers – one of cardiology’s fastest growing populations- more energy and improved quality of life.

Early pacemakers and defibrillators were only implanted during open-heart surgery because the leads or wires were placed outside the heart. Today, Dr. Handa performs these procedures in the EP Lab, since leads are now placed inside the vein.

The EP Lab treats many other heart conditions that in the past were treated only with medications or went undetected. The lab features cardiac mapping, an intricate test to identify defective electrical areas within the heart. Physicians can then treat the patient's arrhythmia using a catheter-based technique called cardiac ablation to “burn out” those defective areas.  .

To be referred to the St. Mary’s Electrophysiology Lab, call 314-SSM-DOCS.