• DOI:10.1111/j.1540-8167.2005.40832.x
• Corpus ID: 25220650

Gold‐Tip Electrodes—A New “Deep Lesion” Technology for Catheter Ablation? In Vitro Comparison of a Gold Alloy Versus Platinum–Iridium Tip Electrode Ablation Catheter

@article{Lewalter2005GoldTipEN,
  title={Gold‐Tip Electrodes—A New “Deep Lesion” Technology for Catheter Ablation? In Vitro Comparison of a Gold Alloy Versus Platinum–Iridium Tip Electrode Ablation Catheter},
  author={Thorsten Lewalter and Alexander Bitzen and Sabine WURTZ, Ph.D. and Robert BLUM, Ph.D. and Karsten SCHLODDER, Ph.D. and Alexander Yang and Lars Martin Lickfett and J{\"o}rg Otto Schwab and Jan Wilko Schrickel and Klaus Tiemann and Markus Linhart and Endre Zima and B{\'e}la Merkely and Berndt L{\"u}deritz},
  journal={Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology},
  year={2005},
  volume={16}
}

• T. Lewalter, A. Bitzen, +11 authors B. Lüderitz
• Published 1 July 2005
• Medicine
• Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology

Radiofrequency (RF) catheter ablation is widely used to induce focal myocardial necrosis using the effect of resistive heating through high‐frequency current delivery. It is current standard to limit the target tissue–electrode interface temperature to a maximum of 60–70°C to avoid char formation. Gold (Au) exhibits a thermal conductivity of nearly four times greater than platinum (Pt–Ir) (3.17 W/cm Kelvin vs 0.716 W/cm Kelvin), it was therefore hypothesized that RF ablation using a gold electrode would create broader and deeper lesions as a result of a better heat conduction from the tissue–electrode interface and additional cooling of the gold electrode by “heat loss” to the intracardiac blood. Both mechanisms would allow applying more RF power to the tissue before the electrode–tissue interface temperature limit is reached. To test this hypothesis, we performed in vitro isolated liver and pig heart investigations comparing lesion depths of a new Au‐alloy‐tip electrode to standard Pt–Ir electrode material.