Doctors have saved a patient's life by killing off part of his heart with neat alcohol.
Medics used the rare treatment to induce a controlled heart attack.
Cardiologist Dr Tom Johnson said his patient, Ronald Aldom, would otherwise never have left the Bristol Heart Institute.
The 77-year-old was suffering from a life-threatening heart rhythm called ventricular tachycardia (VT), which occurred as a result of a previous heart attack. A team of surgeons tried to treat the condition using standard procedures, but were unable to perform them safely.
So the team decided to treat Mr Aldom, from Portishead, near Bristol, with "ethanol ablation". It has only been conducted a handful of times in the UK to treat VT and involves passing a catheter to the heart from the groin, which identifies which part of the heart the dangerous rhythms are coming from.
A tiny balloon is then blown up in the heart artery supplying that area and a small amount of absolute alcohol is injected into the artery to produce a small controlled heart attack.
This kills the area of the heart muscle causing the problem, allowing the heart's rhythm to return to normal.
Mr Aldom was admitted to hospital after his implantable defibrillator gave him a "thunderstorm of shocks".
Dr Johnson, an interventional cardiologist, said: "Mr Aldom presented a couple of months ago with this life-threatening type rhythm disturbance, VT, which was related to the damage done to the heart – the scar associated with his previous heart attack.
"The defibrillator is there to try to prevent you from dropping dead in the community. If your heart is doing something unusual like going very, very fast, firstly it will try to pace you out of that rhythm.
"If that fails, it will actually elicit a shock of energy across the heart which hopefully straightens things out and puts you back into a normal rhythm.
"It is potentially a rather difficult thing for a patient to live with because there is that threat that it could go off and, when it does go off, it is like being kicked in the chest."
Mr Aldom said: "I had an ICD fitted about ten years ago after I had a double bypass operation at the hospital. The device gives my heart a shock when the rhythm becomes abnormal. However, I had about 30 shocks and knew there was something wrong."
Dr Johnson said surgeons had no option but to treat Mr Aldom with ethanol ablation.
"The alternative, unfortunately, was that he was going to die from his irregular heart rhythm," he said.
"The patient is doing tremendously well and is much better."
