The FDA has given its nod to the Fridley Company’s Arctic Front system, which makes use of a freezing technology.

According to the Medtronic, it got the approval of the FDA for using a device to treat an irregular beating of the heart's upper chambers that can result in a stroke.

Medtronic's Arctic Front system stops the condition called the paroxysmal atrial fibrillation by filling a catheter's balloon with a coolant, freezing and forming lesions in the cardiac tissue surrounding the heart's pulmonary vein.

The Fridley-based Medtronic is the debut company in the whole of the United States to make use of this kind of freezing technology to treat atrial fibrillation and is the second company to sell a product approved by the FDA for the situation in the American market.

According to Dr. Vivek Reddy, the director of the Electrophysiology Laboratories at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, this kind of approach gives a straightforward, direct and efficient approach to the pulmonary vein isolation, while offering the patients a new, minimally invasive treatment approach that has proven to be safe as well as effective.