Mayo Clinic receives $48 million in grants to study catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation

"Mayo Clinic received $48 million in grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, and from industry to study the treatment of atrial fibrillation in 3,000 patients and 140 centers around the world. Mayo Clinic is leading the study. The Catheter Ablation Versus Anti-arrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation (CABANA) Trial is designed to determine whether catheter ablation is more effective than drug therapy for the treatment of atrial fibrillation, says Douglas Packer, M.D., the trial's principal investigator and a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic. The study, which will take six years from beginning to releasing results, is a collaborative effort among Dr. Packer and Richard Robb, Ph.D., at Mayo Clinic, Kerry Lee, Ph.D., and Daniel Mark, M.D., at Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C., and the NHLBI. Funding for the trial consists of $18 million from NHLBI/NIH, $20 million from St. Jude Medical and $10 million from Biosense Webster. Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia seen by physicians and affects more than 2 million Americans"