Arrhythmias & electrophysiologyCohort study
Major in-hospital complications after catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias: individual case analysis of 43 031 procedures
- Retrospective multicentre cohort study
- 4 German tertiary centres
- individual case adjudication
Authors' conclusion
Major adverse events are low and comparable after catheter ablation for AFL and AF (∼1.0%), whereas they are five times higher for VT ablations.
Study context
- Population
- Catheter ablations for atrial fibrillation (AF), atrial flutter and ventricular tachycardia (VT) in four German tertiary centres, 2005–2020
- Participants
- 43,031 ablations
- Exposure
- AF vs atrial flutter (AFL) vs VT ablation
- AFn = 30,361
- AFLn = 9,364
- VTn = 3,306
- Outcome
- Major in-hospital complications (femoral vascular complications, iatrogenic tamponade, stroke, in-hospital death)
- Follow-up
- In-hospital
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Major peri-procedural complications
- Overall major complications
- 594 (1.4%)
Observational data: associations, not effects.
Further findings
In-hospital mortality, ablation-related (adjudicated) vs coded
Adjudicated
Coded
Overall complication rate over time · 2005 vs 2020
- 2005
- 0.76%
- 2020
- 1.81%
- Increase
- P = 0.004
Ablations per year · 2005 vs 2020
- All ablations 2005 vs 2020
- 1569 vs 3317
- AF 2005 vs 2020
- 817 vs 2404
- VT 2005 vs 2020
- 120 vs 301
- AFL
- 554 vs 612
Specific complications (all patients) · in-hospital
- Cardiac tamponade (all ablation-related)
- 0.7%
- Stroke (all ablation-related)
- 0.2%
- Femoral vascular complications requiring surgery
- 0.4%
Original publication
Major in-hospital complications after catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias: individual case analysis of 43 031 procedures. Europace. Published 15 December 2023. doi:10.1093/europace/euad361
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it