Heart Disease Etiology Impacts Catheter Ablation Outcomes

Bartholomew's Hospital (London, United Kingdom), and other institutions conducted a study to examine the impact of cardiomyopathy etiology on long-term outcomes of catheter ablation in 101 patients between 2002 and 2014. The patients suffered from known heart disease (KHD; 77 patients) and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (IDCM; 24 patients). All patients had a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) lower than 45%.

The results showed that at three-year follow-up, the IDCM group showed less functional impairment and improved LVEF than the KHD group. Super responders, with an ejection fraction improvement of more than 15%, were overwhelmingly found in the IDCM group, and demonstrated greater AF control. The IDCM group also had significantly less all-cause mortality (1.3%) than the KHD group (17%). The study was published online on December 28, 2015, in the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology.

“Idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy was associated with greater AF control and improvement in symptoms and LVEF, compared to patients with known heart disease post AF ablation,” concluded lead author Sandeep Prabhu, MD, MBBS, of the Alfred Hospital, and colleagues. “AF is an important reversible cause of heart failure in patients with an unexplained cardiomyopathy, and catheter ablation is an effective treatment option.”

AF is a medical condition that can lead to serious adverse events, such as thrombi travelling from the heart to obstruct arteries supplying the brain, causing stroke, or other parts of the body causing tissue damage. AF affects an estimated one percent of the population, with nearly three million AF patients in the United States and six million AF patients in Europe.

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