Background: High power-short duration ablation is an emerging conception for cardiac RF treatment. But the biophysical ablation properties of this technique have not been fully explored. This study compared the electric field characteristics and thermal lesion dimension in High power-short duration (HP-SD) radio frequency (RF) ablation and standard RF ablation by using the finite element method.
Results: The results demonstrated that the lesion size and temperature in HP–SD RF ablation increased faster than standard RF ablation. The thermal lesion volume in both ablation modes demonstrated a linear increase and the rate of increase of HP–SD RF ablation grew faster than that of standard RF ablation. For HP–SD application at 50 W for 5 s, the lesion depth was shallower (1.74 to 2.1 mm vs 2.40 to 3.15 mm) and the surface lesion diameter was broader (2.76 to 3.32 mm vs 2.42 to 2.66 mm) than that for standard RF ablation at 25 W for 30 s.
Conclusion: Compared with standard RF ablation, HP–SD RF ablation creates a broader lesion width and surface lesion diameter but shallower lesion depth, with a faster increase in temperature. HP–SD ablation is more able to achieve uniform and contiguous lesion shape, which is a suitable for point-to-point RF ablation procedures.Higher temperature was formed in deeper space of cardiac tissue in HP–SD ablation. The duration of HP–SD ablation should be strictly controlled for preventing the steam occur in tissue.