Stepwise Approach to Atrial Fibrillation Mapping and Ablation in Persistent and Long-standing Persistent Atrial Fibrillation

5-Year Outcome of Pulmonary Vein Isolation by Loss of Pace Capture on the Ablation Line Versus Electrical Circumferential Pulmonary Vein Isolation

This study sought to compare long-term arrhythmia-free survival between electrical circumferential pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) and PVI with the endpoint of unexcitability along the ablation line.PVI is the standard ablation strategy of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, although arrhythmia recurrence in long-term follow-up (FU) is high. The endpoint of unexcitability along the ablation line results in decreased arrhythmia recurrence compared to electrical PVI in 1-year FU.Seventy-four consecutive patients (age 62.5 ± 10.6 years; 70.3% male) with de novo paroxysmal atrial fibrillation who were initially included in our randomized trial and underwent catheter ablation at our institution were …