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IRE Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation Treatment: Research Status and Prospect
  • +3
  • Fei Xie,
  • Shengjun Wu ,
  • Qi Chen,
  • Xianping Wang,
  • Hao Qiu,
  • Xinhua Chen
Fei Xie
Northern Arizona University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Shengjun Wu
Zhejiang University School of Medicine First Affiliated Hospital
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Qi Chen
Nanchang University Second Affiliated Hospital
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Xianping Wang
Purdue University Northwest
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Hao Qiu
Fort Valley State University
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Xinhua Chen
Zhejiang University School of Medicine First Affiliated Hospital
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Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common arrythmia characterized by rapid and irregular beating of the atrial chambers of the heart. Besides medication, thermal ablation of myocardial tissue is currently the “gold standard” of clinical treatment of AFib, which works by destroying local myocardial tissue to isolate faulty electrical signals causing the arrhythmia within the local area. It is usually performed by heating local tissue with radiofrequency (RF) electrical current, creating conduction-blocking lesions that stop AFib. However, problems associated with RF ablation are related to thermal side effect, such as PVI, thrombus formation, cardiac tamponade, phrenic nerve injury, esophageal fistula, and even stroke. The recent developed ablation modality of using IRE, appears to solve all these problems with less procedure time. This paper highlights the significant event of the IRE ablation in the timeline, and also compare IRE and RF ablation in safety and efficacy.