Interventional electrophysiology offers a great variety of treatment options to patients suffering from symptomatic cardiac arrhythmia. Catheter ablation of supraventricular and ventricular tachycardia has globally evolved a cornerstone in modern arrhythmia management. Complex interventional electrophysiological procedures engaging multiple ablation tools have been developed over the past decades. Fluoroscopy enabled interventional electrophysiologist throughout the years to gain profound knowledge on intracardiac anatomy and catheter movement inside the cardiac cavities and hence develop specific ablation approaches. However, the application of X-ray technologies imposes serious health risks to patients and operators. To reduce the use of fluoroscopy during interventional electrophysiological procedures to the possibly lowest degree and to establish an optimal protection of patients and operators in cases of fluoroscopy is the main goal of modern radiation management. The present manuscript gives an overview of possible strategies of fluoroscopy reduction and specific radiation protection strategies.

• Klíčová slova
• Radiation awareness, Radiation dosage reduction, Radiation protection, Ultra low-dose protocols,
• MeSH
• dávka záření MeSH
• elektrofyziologické techniky kardiologické MeSH
• fluoroskopie metody   MeSH
• katetrizační ablace * MeSH
• lidé MeSH
• radiační expozice * škodlivé účinky   MeSH
• srdeční arytmie terapie   MeSH
• srdeční elektrofyziologie MeSH
• Check Tag
• lidé MeSH
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH
• přehledy MeSH

Radiofrequency catheter ablation has become the treatment of choice for atrial fibrillation (AF) that does not respond to antiarrhythmic drug therapy. During the procedure, fluoroscopy imaging is still considered essential to visualise catheters in real-time. However, radiation is often ignored by physicians since it is invisible and the long-term risks are underestimated. In this respect, it must be emphasised that radiation exposure has various potentially harmful effects, such as acute skin injury, malignancies and genetic disease, both to patients and physicians. For this reason, every electrophysiologist should be aware of the problem and should learn how to decrease radiation exposure by both changing the setting of the system and using complementary imaging technologies. In this review, we aim to discuss the basics of X-ray exposure and suggest practical instructions for how to reduce radiation dosage during AF ablation procedures.

• Klíčová slova
• Atrial fibrillation, fluoroscopy, imaging technology, radiation exposure, radiofrequency ablation,
• Publikační typ
• časopisecké články MeSH