Catheter Ablation Versus Standard Conventional Treatment in Patients With Left Ventricular Dysfunction and Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice; its incidence and prevalence increase exponentially with increasing age and it is associated with increased mortality, more frequent hospitalization, and decreased quality of life.

An initial approach to the cure of patients suffering from AF was surgical intervention with the Maze procedure, which involved the creation of linear lesions in the atria to break the re-entrant wavefronts responsible for maintenance of AF. Subsequently, less invasive procedures have been developed to achieve the same results. One of them is catheter based radio frequency ablation, in which a catheter is placed in the heart percutaneously, followed by application of electrical energy to the target regions, thereby creating a permanent lesion.

The origin of AF is often localized in the pulmonary veins (PVs); therefore one common approach is to ablate them in order to electrically isolate them from the left atrium (LA). Several strategies have been developed, such as linear, segmental, circumferential, and double-lasso.

Additionally, other anatomical regions such as the right atrium (RA), superior vena cava (SVC), and coronary sinus (CS) can be ablated in order to eliminate non-PV drivers of AF.

Heart failure (HF) is frequently a chronic and lethal condition, causing substantial morbidity and, after initial diagnosis, results in mortality rates which come close to or exceed those of many malignancies.