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Vast Majority of Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Procedures Successful

By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, March 29, 2023 -- Successful pulmonary vein isolation is achieved in the majority of patients undergoing atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation, with a low rate of complications, according to a study published in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Jonathan C. Hsu, M.D., from the University of California in San Diego, and colleagues characterized the patient, hospital, and physician characteristics and in-hospital outcomes of AF ablation. The analysis included 76,219 patients identified from the National Cardiovascular Data Registry AFib Ablation Registry (2016 through 2020).

The researchers reported that 55.8 percent of patients had paroxysmal AF (mean CHA₂DS₂-VASc score of 2.7) and were treated by 708 physicians in 162 hospitals. The vast majority of patients (92.4 percent) had successful isolation of all pulmonary veins. Any complication during procedural admission occurred in 2.50 percent of patients and major complication occurred in 0.9 percent, including significant bradycardia (0.47 percent), heart failure (0.47 percent), and pericardial effusion requiring intervention (0.44 percent). Hospitalization of more than one day was required in 11.8 percent of patients, and there were 41 in-hospital deaths (0.05 percent).

"The AFib Ablation Registry will serve an important role in quality improvement for participating hospitals and provide generalizable insight into real-world, contemporary trends and outcomes of patients undergoing AF ablation," the authors write.

Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries.

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Posted March 2023