Cor Vasa 2014, 56(1):e19-e26 | DOI: 10.1016/j.crvasa.2013.09.001

Current status and future catheter ablation strategies in atrial fibrillation

Lukas Fiedler*, Charlotte Eitel, Sascha Rolf, Phillip Sommer, Thomas Gaspar, Emmanuel Koutalas, Arash Arya, Gerhard Hindricks, Christopher Piorkowski
Oddělení elektrofyziologie, Kardiocentrum, Lipská univerzita, Lipsko, Německo

Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) is a highly effective therapy to achieve freedom of recurrent arrhythmia and relief from symptomatic AF. Transmural ablation of atrial tissue is crucial for success. Thus steerable sheaths and catheter design with contact measurement as additional feature have been developed to increase success rates. New 3 dimentional (3D) mapping technologies engage clinical routine to reduce fluoroscopy time and radiation dose for patients and medical staff to a minimum. To unmask dormant pulmonary vein reconduction and to avoid early pulmonary vein reconduction administration of adenosine is useful. Future approaches aim at individualized ablation strategies taking clinical and electrophysiologic characteristics of the individual patient into account.

Keywords: Ablation; Atrial fibrillation; Individualized ablation strategies; 3D mapping

Received: December 3, 2012; Revised: August 4, 2013; Accepted: September 11, 2013; Published: February 1, 2014  Show citation

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Fiedler L, Eitel C, Rolf S, Sommer P, Gaspar T, Koutalas E, et al.. Current status and future catheter ablation strategies in atrial fibrillation. Cor Vasa. 2014;56(1):e19-26. doi: 10.1016/j.crvasa.2013.09.001.
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