ArticleFrontiers in cardiovascular medicine2022
Histopathological Examination of an Explanted Heart in a Long-Term Responder to Cardiac Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (STereotactic Arrhythmia Radioablation).
Article in Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- The integration of electroanatomic maps into cardiac radioablation treatment planning: A systematic review.Medical physics · 2025Pooled it
- Standardized processing of explanted hearts after stereotactic arrhythmia radiotherapy (Bio-STAR): a STOPSTORM framework and first human findings.European heart journal open · 2026Article
- Pathological findings of stereotactic cardiac radiotherapy for the treatment of ventricular tachycardia in patients with Chagas disease: case series.European heart journal. Case reports · 2026Article
- STAR Locally Prolongs Effective Refractory Period and Increases Ventricular Tachycardia Cycle Length Without Short-Term Scar Formation or Functional Decline: Insights From a Translational Porcine Model Study.Circulation. Arrhythmia and electrophysiology · 2025Article
- Repeated stereotactic radioablation for recurrent ventricular tachycardia in a patient with lung cancer.Cardiology journal · 2025Article
- Radiation therapy for ventricular arrhythmias.Journal of medical imaging and radiation oncology · 2024Review
- Precision requirements in stereotactic arrhythmia radioablation for ventricular tachycardia.Physics and imaging in radiation oncology · 2023Article
- Stereotactic Arrhythmia Radioablation (STAR): A Multidisciplinary Narrative Minireview of Preclinical Studies.In vivo (Athens, Greece)Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
20 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cardiac stereotactic body radiotherapy is an emerging treatment method for recurrent ventricular tachycardia refractory to invasive treatment methods. The single-fraction delivery of 25 Gy was assumed to produce fibrosis, similar to a post-radiofrequency ablation scar. However, the dynamics of clinical response and recent preclinical findings suggest a possible different mechanism. The data on histopathological presentation of post-radiotherapy hearts is scarce, and the authors provide significantly different conclusions. In this article, we present unique data on histopathological examination of a heart explanted from a patient who had a persistent anti-arrhythmic response that lasted almost a year, until a heart failure exacerbation caused a necessity of a heart transplant. Despite a complete treatment response, there was no homogenous transmural fibrosis in the irradiated region, and the overall presentation of the heart was similar to other transplanted hearts of patients with advanced heart failure. In conclusion, our findings support the theorem of functional changes as a source of the anti-arrhythmic mechanism of radiotherapy and show that durable treatment response can be achieved in absence of transmural fibrosis of the irradiated myocardium.
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Registered trials
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