EDUCATION IN HEART

Electrophysiology

Catheter and surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation

Mark J Earley¹, Richard J Schilling²

¹ Manchester Heart Centre, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, UK
² St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr Richard Schilling
Cardiology Research Department, St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Dominion House, 60 Bartholomew Close, London EC1A 7BE, UK; r.schilling@qmul.ac.uk

Keywords: atrial fibrillation; mechanisms; catheter ablation; surgical ablation

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There is increasing confusion regarding the results and benefits of catheter and surgical ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF). This is because of rapidly evolving techniques and a wide range of opinion regarding its efficacy. Just as the balloon and stent enthusiasts of the 1980s were viewed with some suspicion by many doctors treating coronary atherosclerosis,^w1 the practice of curative ablation of AF has been critically reviewed by cardiologists.^{w2 w3} This article aims to demonstrate why an apparently chaotic heart rhythm is amenable to cure, critically review the currently employed surgical and catheter techniques, and provide some guidelines as to the appropriate referral of patients for these procedures.

PAROXYSMAL, PERSISTENT, AND PERMANENT AF

AF is usually prefixed by a temporal descriptive term such as paroxysmal or chronic which has implications for the most suitable treatment strategy. A consensus on nomenclature has now been achieved¹ in which an AF event is either the first detected or a . . . [Full text of this article]

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