SAN DIEGO — Vektor Medical said a peer-reviewed study published in EP Europace found that vMap-guided activation mapping and ablation were associated with significantly improved one-year outcomes in patients with hemodynamically unstable ventricular tachycardia, without increasing procedure time, fluoroscopy exposure, or complications.
The study, titled “Artificial Intelligence ECG Localization Facilitates Focused Activation Mapping and Improves Outcomes in Hemodynamically Unstable Ventricular Tachycardia,” reported that 80% of patients treated with vMap-guided mapping were free from ventricular tachycardia recurrence or death at one year, compared with 43% of patients treated using conventional ablation strategies.
Hemodynamically unstable ventricular tachycardia is among the most complex and high-risk arrhythmias managed by electrophysiologists. Because sustained VT is often poorly tolerated, physicians frequently rely on substrate-only ablation approaches, which can limit mechanistic insight and contribute to recurrence. Prior research has shown that acute hemodynamic decompensation occurs in up to 11% of VT ablation procedures, sometimes resulting in cardiogenic shock or death.
The investigator-initiated, two-center study compared outcomes in 30 patients who underwent vMap-guided mapping and ablation with 30 control patients treated using traditional ablation techniques. In the vMap group, physicians used brief VT inductions to rapidly localize arrhythmia origin and guide targeted catheter placement for focused activation mapping.
According to the study, vMap localized VT origin in under 30 seconds using noninvasive computational analysis of standard 12-lead ECG data, allowing physicians to minimize VT duration while preserving diagnostically meaningful information. Acute termination of VT occurred in 37% of vMap-guided patients, compared with no acute VT termination in the control group.
Despite a higher-risk baseline profile among patients treated with vMap-guided ablation, procedural time, fluoroscopy time, and complication rates were similar between groups. There was no increase in acute hemodynamic collapse or need for rescue mechanical circulatory support.
“These patients represent one of the most challenging populations electrophysiologists treat,” said Gordon Ho, MD, FHRS, lead author of the study and a cardiac electrophysiologist at UC San Diego Health. “Hemodynamic instability often forces compromises in mapping strategy. This study demonstrates that rapid, non-invasive localization can preserve physiologically meaningful activation mapping while minimizing VT duration. The significant improvement in one-year outcomes suggests that enabling focused mechanistic ablation — even in unstable VT — may meaningfully improve care in a population where treatment options have been limited.”
Vektor Medical said the findings highlight the potential benefits of maintaining mechanistic insight during VT ablation rather than defaulting to substrate-only approaches when VT tolerance is limited.
“Demonstrating improved patient outcomes without added procedural time or risk is critical,” said Rob Krummen, CEO of Vektor Medical. “Rigorous, investigator-led studies like this show that vMap’s non-invasive, data-driven approach can expand the ability to effectively and safely map even the most challenging arrhythmias, like VT, enabling targeted ablation particularly in high-risk patients where treatment compromises have historically been necessary.”
