Long-term AF recurrence after catheter ablation in AF and HFpEF
Catheter ablation has been shown to be safe and feasible in patients
with AF and HFpEF. However, the long-term successful rate is
controversial among studies, varying from 45% to
94.8%14-17, which mainly depends on different
characteristics of the study population, different definitions of HFpEF,
different ablation strategies, and different follow-up durations.
Machino-Ohtsuka et al14 revealed that
multiple-procedure drug-free success rate at 3 years was only 45%. In
the present study, 56 (78.9%) patients in catheter ablation group
maintained sinus rhythm after multiple procedures during 31.8-month
follow-up. We believe that this discrepancy is attributed to following
factors: i) almost 70% of patients were persistent or long-standing
persistent AF in Machino-Ohtsuka’s study, while the proportion was 50%
in our study; ii) the ablation technique employed in the present study
was contact force-guided, which could improve the durability of ablation
lesions.