An estimated 10.5 million Americans have atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular and often fast heart rhythm in the heart’s upper chambers, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
Heart specialists at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville are testing a new device that can help locate the source of atrial fibrillation, or AFib, with the use of an electrocardiogram (EKG).
Symptoms of AFib include fatigue, shortness of breath and heart palpitations.
“It’s that feeling of a fish flopping around in your chest,” says Dr. Saumil Oza, an electrophysiologist at Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside.
The diagnosis of AFib is typically confirmed with an EKG or with the use of monitors that patients may wear for up to a month. Increasingly, patients and their physicians are identifying AFib with the use of smart watches that can detect for it, Oza says.
Treatments for AFib include medications, cardioversion to restore a normal heart rhythm, or cardiac ablation.
Physicians often will insert a catheter in the heart to map electrical signatures and trace where AFib starts. With the FDA-cleared vMAP device, made by Vektor Medical of San Diego, physicians can obtain more detailed information before an ablation procedure is performed to treat AFib.
“It gives us much more flexibility and helps us plan before we start,” Oza says. “It tells us how many different areas might be problematic and where we need to begin.”
When a patient has recurring AFib, it can be difficult to identify what area of the heart is causing the problem. “In these redo procedures, vMAP is helpful in targeting areas of the heart that are now acting up outside of the usual areas we treat,” Oza says.
Oza is part of a study to examine how vMAP may boost efficiency and workflow. The hospital will enroll about 25 to 30 patients in that study, which aims to include 110 patients among five sites.
The hospital also is enrolling a larger number of patients for a randomized, multicenter trial called Improved AF to determine if using vMAP boosts outcomes for patients undergoing AFib ablation compared with traditional mapping methods.
Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside performed about 1,200 AFib ablation treatments in 2025 and an additional 1,500 pulsed field ablations using short, high-energy electrical pulses, Oza says.