GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Don Brooks has a passion for teaching in a unique way. He and his wife founded Northern Discovery Academy in Newaygo, an alternative K-12 school.
About five years ago, he had his first atrial fibrillation heart event.
"My students were worried about me," said Brooks.
Last fall, he had another event at a chess tournament. He went to a hospital immediately, where he was shocked back into rhythm.
"Your heart feels hollow, you're continually out of breath," said Brooks about the experience before he was shocked. "To me, it was miserable."
Brooks' doctor at Corewell Health, Dr. Andre Gauri, suggested a new procedure.
"This new technology is called pulse field ablation," said Gauri. "It's a safer modality of creating that scar tissue in the appropriate areas of the heart to treat AFib without the need for medications. And it's a little quicker."
He explains for the past 25 years, the main way to treat AFib was with thermal ablation. Now, he says pulse field ablation is easier to target the heart without the worry of affecting other tissue nearby.
"It's been used for a couple years in Europe, but we just got it last month here in the United States," said Gauri. "We actually were fortunate enough to be the first site in the Midwest to do this procedure."
Corewell Health West in Grand Rapids and Corewell Health East in Metro Detroit each did their first procedure on the same day in February.
Brooks agreed to the procedure, calling it "seamless."
Now, Brooks is back teaching at the school, his heart no longer feeling "hollow," but full with his passion for learning.
"Now, I have a greater confidence that I'm not going to have another," said Brooks. "That's meaningful."
Since the first procedure, Gauri said he and his team have continued to do them weekly. He said it is too soon to tell if the long-term effects will prove the pulse field ablation is "significantly better." However, he said it is safer and faster than previous methods.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AFib is the most common type of irregular heart rhythm. As the population in the United States continues to age, 12.1 million people are expected to have AFib by 2030.
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