Why the study?
Epicardial connections between the pulmonary veins and atrium may hinder achieving complete pulmonary vein antrum isolation in patients with AF.
High-density mapping reveals that epicardial connections remain in 11% of patients after conventional pulmonary vein isolation, and their prevalence increases with AF duration and left atrial volume.
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May influence ablation planning in persistent AF; observational data leaves open whether targeting epicardial connections improves outcomes.
Nyuta et al. (2022) studied this question.
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