Partnership Opportunities

Treatments For Heart Arrhythmia

New technologies for improving catheter ablation

Technology Overview

Dr. Stephen SeslarDr. Stephen Seslar

As a clinician and electrophysiologist, Dr. Stephen Seslar is focused on improving access to specialty procedures such as catheter ablation, a treatment for heart arrhythmia. Heart arrhythmia disorders are caused by age, heart disease, injury, surgery, and other factors. Catheter ablation is a minimally invasive technique that uses a catheter inserted at the groin and threaded up to the heart to detect the electrical signals from the muscle cells of the heart, and to determine the exact location of electrical signals that cause the heart rhythm disorder. The catheter is then used to either freeze or cauterize a very small area of the heart to prevent the aberrant electrical signal from giving rise to the arrhythmia.

Dr. Seslar is focused on using cutting edge technology to improve access to catheter ablation. For example, he has developed a catheter ablation training simulator using 3D modeling and printing. The training simulator has many uses and applications such as generic or patient specific heart models that can be used to train doctors who are new to the technique. Dr. Seslar is also exploring the use of virtual reality to improve the portability and educational value of the simulator as it relates to the real-life experience of performing catheter ablation.  Finally, Dr. Seslar believes that this technology will eventually allow for simplification and lowered cost of the catheter ablation procedure in the future, which could expand the use of performance of these procedures in the rural US and developing countries.

Dr. Seslar is interested in developing industry partnerships to create new technologies that can improve his training simulator and can improve catheter ablation as a treatment for arrhythmia.

Stage of Development

  • Device development in preparation for pre-clinical in vivo studies

Partnering Opportunities

  • Collaborative research and development opportunity
  • Sponsored research agreement
  • Licensing agreement
  • Consultation agreement

Publications

  1. Hermsen JL, Burke TM, Seslar SP, Owens DS, Ripley BA, Mokadam NA, Verrier ED. Scan, plan, print, practice, perform: Development and use of a patient-specific 3-dimensional printed model in adult cardiac surgery. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2017; 153: 132-140.
  2. Seslar SP, Kugler J, Batra AS, et al. The Multicenter Pediatric and Adult Congenital EP Quality (MAP-IT) Initiative-rationale and design: report from the pediatric and congenital electrophysiology society's MAP-IT taskforce. Congenit Heart Dis. 2013; 8:381-92.
  3. Seslar SP, Patton KK. Initial Experience with a Novel Electrophysiology Mapping Simulator. PACE 2017. Feb; 41(2): 197-202
  4. James RC, Monsky WL, Jorgensen NW, Seslar SP. Virtual-Reality Guided Versus Fluoroscopy-Guided Transseptal Puncture in a Cardiac Phantom. J Invasive Cardiol. 2020 Feb;32(2):76-81.

Learn More

To learn more about partnering with Seattle Children’s Research Institute on this or other projects, email the Office of Science-Industry Partnerships.