Does high-power, short-duration radiofrequency ablation improve safety and efficacy compared to conventional ablation in patients with atrial fibrillation?
High-power, short-duration ablation is an emerging alternative for AF treatment with potential advantages in procedural time and lesion formation, though robust clinical validation is still ongoing.
High-power, short-duration (HPSD) ablation for the treatment of AF is emerging as an alternative to ablation using conventional ablation generator settings characterised by lower power and longer duration. Although the reported potential advantages of HPSD ablation include less tissue oedema and collateral tissue damage, a reduction in procedural time and superior ablation lesion formation, clinical studies of HPSD ablation validating these observations are limited. One of the main challenges for HPSD ablation has been the inability to adequately assess temperature and lesion formation in real time. Novel catheter designs may improve the accuracy of intra-ablation temperature recording and correspondingly may improve the safety profile of HPSD ablation. Clinical studies of HPSD ablation are on-going and interpretation of the data from these and other studies will be required to ascertain the clinical value of HPSD ablation.
Kotadia et al. (Tue,) studied this question.