Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia in clinical practice. It is associated with an increased risk of stroke, chronic heart failure, and sudden cardiac death. Our options of restoring and maintaining sinus rhythm have a very limited effect, both in the case of antiarrhythmic and catheter treatment. Catheter ablation has proven to be a more effective approach than antiarrhythmic therapy. The success rate of the procedure reaches 70%. However, radiofrequency ablation is associated with a risk of complications, with 4.5% of patients likely to develop major complications, including tamponade (1.31%), femoral pseudoaneurysm (0.71%), and death (0.15%). Given the generally recognized dominant role of the pulmonary veins in the induction of atrial fibrillation, their electrical isolation has become the recommended tactic of the catheter approach. In the case of patients with paroxysmal form of atrial fibrillation, the success rate of the procedure reaches 87%. Unfortunately, in the case of persistent forms of atrial fibrillation, the effectiveness of the primary procedure decreases to 28% and reaches 51% with repeated interventions. In addition to the anatomically oriented isolation of the pulmonary veins, a number of strategies have been proposed to reach the secondary zones of atrial fibrillation induction. The results of recent studies on the effectiveness of strategies for ablation of rotor regions and their role in the induction and maintenance of AF may lead to the further development of catheter ablation techniques and an individual radiofrequency ablation approach in a particular patient.
Role of transoesophageal echocardiography in evaluating the effect of catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation on anatomy and function of the pulmonary veins