The Role of Complex Fractionated Atrial Electrograms in Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Moving to the Beat of a Different Drum

摘要

As physicians bid farewell to the last century, they also witnessed the rise of catheter-based ablation and the fall of antiarrhythmic drug use for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. At that time, only a select few investigators truly believed that catheter-based ablation would work for treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF).The initial attempts at catheter ablation, patterned after the Cox surgical Maze procedure, were based on the anatomical approach with empirically created multiple linear lesions in both atria. The catheter-based Maze ablation was short lived, however, because the procedure was difficult, time-consuming, and associated with significant complications. Fortunately, the breakthrough for AF ablation came after Hai'ssaguerre et al. (1) described pulmonary veins (PVs) as important sources of focal AF; they have since become the most important target for AF ablation#