A new Canadian approach to treating a common heart rhythm condition could be a game-changer for patients suffering from atrial fibrillation or atrial fibrillation.
Atrial fibrillation is considered the most common arrhythmia and occurs in the upper chambers of the heart.
Affecting one to two percent of the general population, irregular heartbeat can cause symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue, but can lead to serious consequences such as stroke or heart failure.
Fatigue led Edmonton’s Jon Davies to suspect something was wrong.
“I used to hike in the mountains and play a lot of squash, and then that quickly disappeared in my early 50s,” he told Global News in an interview. “I just thought it was old age, having a desk job and maybe not enough exercise.”
His wife, Nora, said he was often tired and slept a lot.
He was eventually diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, but when he spoke about treatment options, he was left in shock.
“They told me my heart had grown so big that it wouldn’t make sense for them to treat it surgically, so that’s when they said you’re going to continue taking blood thinners,” Davies said.
Receive weekly health news
Receive the latest medical news and health information every Sunday.
Until this year, he said he had to accept the “status quo,” adding that he got a second opinion with the same result.
People with atrial fibrillation often receive treatment either with medications or with what is called “catheter ablation.”
“Patients are usually sedated or put completely to sleep and we put little tubes in the groins and we pass wires through the heart, cross over to the left side of the heart and what we’re trying to do is kill the tissue around the pulmonary veins,” said Dr. Paul Angaran, director of cardiac arrhythmia at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
The process involves creating tiny scars in an area of the heart, according to the Mayo Clinic. During atrial fibrillation, erroneous signals can tell the heart to beat irregularly. Scars prevent these erroneous signals from reaching their target.
“Typically we burn, so we use energy sources that overheat the tissue and sometimes we may use energy sources that freeze the tissue,” said Dr. Gianluigi Bisleri, director of minimally invasive and robotic cardiac surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital. “But either way, we create these scars that become permanent and stop the irregular heartbeat.”
But Angaran said not everyone with atrial fibrillation will see such treatment effective.
Angaran has partnered with Bisleri to develop a new approach to help people with atrial fibrillation.
The result is a two-part robotic technique using ablations from outside the heart and then inwards using a catheter technique.
“This allows us not only to use robotic technologies that give us more dexterity, more ability to reach and see the heart, but also to treat larger areas of the heart with ablation,” Bisleri said.
The use of minimally invasive robotic surgery and catheter technology is a first in Canada, Bisleri said.
Patients interested in the procedure must be referred to Bisleri and Angaran, but the former told Global News that while a referral is simple, there is not enough awareness of their approach.
Patients must wait a few weeks or months between each procedure, with Angaran noting that doctors want patients’ external scars to be healed before proceeding with the internal procedure.
One of their first patients was Davies, who discovered the procedure while searching online.
Davies underwent the first part of the procedure, the robotic technique, in September and is expected to return to Toronto in the coming weeks for the catheter ablation.
“It’s nice to be able to potentially, you know, take that diagnosis and direct it in a much more humane way, in a way that, you know, people appreciate much more than the alternative,” he said.
Angaran told Global News that in patients with long-standing persistent atrial fibrillation, the long-term success rate with this approach could be as high as 70 to 80 percent.
—with files from Katherine Ward of Global News
© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Gn Health
