Lone Atrial Fibrillation: Risk Factors, Triggers And Ablation Techniques.

BACKGROUND: Since its introduction in 1953, lone atrial fibrillation (LAF) has not been defined with any consistency, resulting in an enormous variation in the way the term is used. Inherent to this, results from studies vary considerably. Many predisposing factors and pathogenic influences have been discovered over the past years, which raise the question if the term LAF should still be used and if the treatment should be different from non-lone atrial fibrillation (non-LAF). Therefore this systematic review on LAF provides an overview of risk factors and triggers, the second part focuses on the application of catheter and surgical ablation techniques. METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed in the PubMed database. All identified articles were screened and checked for eligibility by the two authors. Additional literature was sought by screening the references of eligible articles. CONCLUSIONS: Insufficient evidence exists to consider LAF as a real, isolated and useful entity. A re-definition or even avoiding the use of the term LAF might be appropriate.