Catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation facilitated by preprocedural three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography: Long-term outcome

Table 1 Clinical data

	Group A	Group A1	Group A2	Group B	P
Patients	30	11	19	20	0.07
Men:Women	18:12	5:6	13:6	17:3
Age (yr), mean (SD)	60.0 (9.7)	61.6 (8.0)	59.1 (10.7)	62.1 (8.4)	0.57
Cardiac disease					0.05
None	13	8	5	2
CAD	3	1	2	9
DCM	0	0	0	1
Valvular heart disease1	5	1	4	5
Arterial hypertension	9	1	8	2
Other	0	0	0	1
Previous cardiac surgery	1	0	1	0	0.43
Left ventricular ejection fraction, mean (SD)	58.0% (5.8%)	59.1% (7.4%)	57.4% (4.8%)	52.6% (9.9%)	0.06
Antiarrhythmic drug therapy prior to the ablation procedure					0.68
Class Ic (e.g., flecainide, propafenone)	1	0	1	2
Class III (e.g., amiodarone, sotalol)	5	0	5	2
Beta-blocker in combination with a class Ic or class III antiarrhythmic drug	16/7	7/3	9/4	3/7
Beta-blocker	1	1	0	6
Digitalis	0	0	0	0
Other	0	0	0	0

¹Not requiring surgery. CAD: Coronary artery disease; DCM: Dilated cardiomyopathy (left ventricular ejection fraction < 40%).

Table 2 Left atrial anatomy

	Total
Common PV ostium1,2 (left PVs/right PVs)	2 (1/1)
Accessory PVs1,2 (left PVs/right PVs)	1 (0/1)
Early PV branching2	3
LSPV	0
LIPV	0
RSPV	2
RIPV	1
Extremely short distance between the LAA and the LSPV1	3
Very prominent left atrial appendage1	2

¹3D TEE;

²Invasive PV angiography. LAA: Left atrial appendage; LIPV: Left inferior pulmonary vein; LSPV: Left superior pulmonary vein; PV(s): Pulmonary vein(s); RIPV: Right inferior pulmonary vein; RSPV: Right superior pulmonary vein.

Table 3 Long-term follow-up data

	Group A	Group A1	Group A2	Group B	Total	P
Midterm follow-up (12 mo)	26/30	10/11	16/19	15/20	41/50	0.82
No. of patients without any arrhythmia recurrence	(86.7%)	(90.6%)	(84.2%)	(75.0%)	(82.0%)
Long-term follow-up (4 yr)	22/30	8/11	14/19	12/20	34/50	0.62
No. of patients without any arrhythmia recurrence	(73.3%)	(72.7%)	(73.7%)	(60.0%)	(68.0%)