The TWIN-VT study, conducted under an FDA investigational device exemption that limited enrollment to 10 patients at a single center, was the first prospective test of whether a computational heart model could guide an ablation in real patients. All 10 were post-heart-attack patients with recurrent VT — the kind of cases where standard ablation most often falls short.

Jonathan Chrispin, MD

Every patient was rendered noninducible for VT by the end of their procedures. Over a mean follow-up of 405 days, eight of 10 remained arrhythmia-free without anti-arrhythmic drugs. None received a shock from an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. At the time of this writing, Chrispin said, none have had recurrent VT.

The study is small, single-center, and not randomized. But it is the first prospective demonstration that a patient-specific computational simulation — a medical digital twin — could directly guide a procedure and produce outcomes that appear to exceed the current standard of care.

The question now is whether the same idea can work for cancer.

Source: MEDspace