Current Cardiology Reviews

Author(s): Laurent Roten, Nicolas Derval, Patrizio Pascale, Daniel Scherr, Yuki Komatsu, Ashok Shah, Khaled Ramoul, Arnaud Denis, Frederic Sacher, Meleze Hocini, Michel Haissaguerre and Pierre Jais

DOI: 10.2174/157340312803760802

Current Hot Potatoes in Atrial Fibrillation Ablation

Page: [327 - 346] Pages: 20

  • * (Excluding Mailing and Handling)

Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation has evolved to the treatment of choice for patients with drug-resistant and symptomatic AF. Pulmonary vein isolation at the ostial or antral level usually is sufficient for treatment of true paroxysmal AF. For persistent AF ablation, drivers and perpetuators outside of the pulmonary veins are responsible for AF maintenance and have to be targeted to achieve satisfying arrhythmia-free success rate. Both complex fractionated atrial electrogram (CFAE) ablation and linear ablation are added to pulmonary vein isolation for persistent AF ablation. Nevertheless, ablation failure and necessity of repeat ablations are still frequent, especially after persistent AF ablation. Pulmonary vein reconduction is the main reason for arrhythmia recurrence after paroxysmal and to a lesser extent after persistent AF ablation. Failure of persistent AF ablation mostly is a consequence of inadequate trigger ablation, substrate modification or incompletely ablated or reconducting linear lesions. In this review we will discuss these points responsible for AF recurrence after ablation and review current possibilities on how to overcome these limitations.

Keywords: Atrial fibrillation, catheter ablation, complex fractionated atrial electrograms, linear ablation, pulmonary vein isolation