Marin General Hospital’s Electrophysiology Program is dedicated to diagnosing and treating patients with heart arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats. Opened in 2002, the Electrophysiology Laboratory is one of only a dozen labs in Northern California and has treated patients from the Bay Area and beyond (including Europe). This state-of-the-art facility combines personalized patient care with sophisticated technology in a patient centered environment. Our highly skilled multidisciplinary team guides each patient from diagnosis to recovery. 
The lab has extensive experience with Atrial Fibrillation Ablation in Northern California, providing patients with expert medical management and a full range of therapies.
Procedures performed in the lab include:
- permanent pacemakers (single and biventricular pacers)
- radiofrequency ablation for ventricular and supraventricular arrhythmias, including atrial flutter, atrial fibrillation, SVT and others
- defibrillators (ICDs), including biventricular and investigational devices
Atrial Fibrillation Program
Atrial Fibrillation is the most common type of irregular heart rhythm, affecting five million Americans. Patients may feel dizzy, weak or lightheaded because the upper two heart chambers are beating irregularly. They may also complain of fluttering in the chest, shortness or breath and, sometimes, chest pains. This condition puts patients at risk for bloodclots or stroke and while the condition is not necessarily life threatening, it has a major impact on a patient’s quality of life.For years, the standard AF treatment was medication and cardioversion (a low voltage shock to the chest wall to restore heart rhythm). Both of these treatments eventually stop working in most patients. Sometimes, pacemakers are implanted.
Now AF patients can be treated at MGH with a technique that holds real hope as a cure for this debilitating condition. Marin General has attracted a team that has used this technique successfully on a high volume of patients.
The Pulmonary Vein Isolation (PVI) technique, a form of ablation (localized disruption of electrical pathways in the heart), is more effective, faster and offers dramatically fewer complications. It can be done in an EP lab equipped with the most advanced medical technology. MGH uses a variation of this technique, available at a handful of hospitals in the United States and is done by fewer than a half dozen electrophysiologists, physicians who are heart rhythm specialists.
Our Atrial Fibrillation Program was named number three internationally by Afibbers International in 2007.
For more information: call 415-925-7207