AFib Treatment Now Available at Surgical Center

By Kyle Marksteiner

Advanced atrial fibrillation (AFib) treatment is now available to residents of Carlsbad and the surrounding area at a local surgical center, thanks to a growing collaborative effort between Dr. Amanda Ryan and a group of electrophysiologists.

AFib is a common disorder involving different chambers of the heart beating irregularly. This increases the risk of blood clots and stroke risk.

“Consequences to patients are devastating and can include strokes, dementia, kidney disease, and heart failure,” said Dr. Anish Amin, Chief Medical Officer for Current Clinic, the group providing the service.

AFib is treated partially with the use of blood thinners, but more extensively through arrhythmia care or a cardiac ablation. The process restores a regular heart rhythm.

“We need to manage an irregular rhythm,” Dr. Ryan said. “Too many impulses are making the heart’s chambers beat fast or irregular.”

Dr. Ryan herself is an interventional cardiologist; however, AFib treatment often requires the care of an electrophysiologist, a specialist who handles the “electricity” of the heart.

This type of care can be difficult to obtain, even in urban areas. There are fewer than 2,000 electrophysiology specialists in the United States.

“Access to electrophysiology has consistently been the most limited resource in all of health care,” said Dr. Amin. “Patients are often only receiving care if they live in a metro area and are near an affluent hospital that has access to all of the right equipment.”

The equipment is hard to obtain and, up until recently, ablations could only be performed in hospitals, not surgical centers. Carlsbad residents would generally have to travel to Lubbock, El Paso, or Albuquerque for treatment. Even then, the wait could be up to a year.

Partnership in the Works

Dr. Ryan opened the Advanced Heart and Vascular Center of New Mexico in 2022, and the business opened its surgical center in north Carlsbad in 2024. Its mission, all along, was to address perceived deficiencies in rural health care.

“We had a strategic plan,” Dr. Ryan said. “We built all of this with the concept of access to care, and it was no easy task to accomplish that.”

Most recently, Advanced Heart and Vascular Center of New Mexico became one of the founding partners of Current Clinic, and the center has taken on that name. The partnership includes Carlsbad residents Clay and Linda Wilson, as well as a group of electrophysiologists from the Ohio area.

“We started with two members, and now we have 48 staff members,” Dr. Ryan said. “The idea is to have 10 to 15 specialized AFib surgical centers nationwide partnering with industry leading EP cardiologists.”

Up until months ago, surgical centers were not able to perform atrial ablations. A new technology called Pulse Field Ablation vastly improved procedure safety and reduced average time from six hours to one hour. Medical review boards then deemed that surgical centers would be capable of handling this procedure.

With Carlsbad serving as Current Clinic’s pilot plant, of sorts, other surgical center partnerships are being developed. While it may be difficult to build a new hospital, building a surgical center is significantly more possible, and Current Clinic has been looking at different markets that are traditionally underserved.

Dr. Ryan said the necessary equipment involved ordering nine new software and 18 new hardware systems. The process of ordering and installing the equipment took half a year.

Electrophysiology care began in January, and the first ablations were performed in the last week of the month. They were the first cardiac ablations performed at any surgical center (so not a hospital) in New Mexico. A cadre of electrophysiologists fly into Carlsbad every other week to perform ablations. One of them will be Dr. Anish Amin, Current Clinic’s Chief Medical Officer.

“We’re trying to get access to every community where the need is greatest,” Dr. Amin said. “Dr. Ryan has gone out of her way to look for opportunities to extend cardiovascular care so that these kinds of services can be provided.”

For more information, please visit https://currentclinic.com/.