By Sandra G. Boodman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 3, 2004

The catheter that Northern Virginia cardiologist Margaret H. Bell threaded into Johnathan Suthard's beating heart was as thin as a strand of linguini, its tip loaded with pressurized frozen nitrous oxide. The solution it would emit was chilled to minus-75 degrees Celsius, a temperature equivalent to the coldest recorded on the Siberian steppes.

Applied precisely to specific spots on the upper right chamber of his heart, the suspected source of Johnathan's potentially fatal heart arrhythmias, the liquid literally froze the targeted tissues to death. The procedure Bell and her partner performed last May known as cardiac cryoablation worked perfectly, restoring the 13-year-old's too-fast heart rate to a normal rhythm.

Doctors at Inova Fairfax Hospital were the first in the Washington area to perform cardiac cryoablation, using a device approved last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Specialists at Children's National Medical Center in the District are set to offer it, officials there said, and pediatric cardiac experts predict the procedure will be widely used by next year.

Now liberated from the constraints that have circumscribed his life since age 8, the rising ninth-grader from Manassas Park is immersed in football practice and plans to try out for the track and basketball teams.