Atrial fibrillation in cardiac resynchronization recipients with and without prior arrhythmic history. How much of arrhythmia is too much?

Abstract

Background:The aim of the study was to assess long-term incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) (Cardiol J 2015; 22, 3: 267-275)

Efficacy and Safety of Cryoballoon Ablation in Patients With Heart Failure and Reduced Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction ― A Multicenter Study ―

“…5 Additionally, it has been shown that the arrhythmia burden influence outcomes in HFrEF patients. 18 Although a retrospective analysis, our findings on CB2-based PVI in HFrEF patients are in line with previous results and we found an improved NYHA class and increased LVEF during follow-up. 19 The reported rates for improved LVEF range between 4% and 22%.…”

Cryoballoon ablation of atrial fibrillation in patients with advanced systolic heart failure and cardiac implantable electronic devices

“…However, even transient reduction in arrhythmia burden may translate into symptomatic and echocardiographic benefit, especially in HF patients. It was shown previously that arrhythmia burden influenced outcomes in HF patients [10]. What is more, only four patients in our group underwent a second procedure, which translates into 1.13 procedures/patient.…”

Atrial high-rate episodes predict clinical outcome in patients with cardiac resynchronization therapy

“…Prior to this study, several have studied device-detected data to assess the incidence and/or the clinical importance of AF in CRT-patients [7,8,9,10,11,12]. However, the monitoring periods, as well as the definitions of AF have varied, why it is difficult to make comparisons and conclusions.…”

“…[8] Lenarcyk et al recently studied device-collected data on AF episodes during 24 months and found that for each additional per-cent of time spent in AF mortality increased by 5 %. Even though Lenarcyk et.…”

“…[4] This finding is associated with worse prognosis [5,6] but the prognostic impact of post-implant device-detected AF is more uncertain in a CRT population. [7,8,9,10,11,12] Automatic mode switching (AMS) algorithms, designed to prevent tracking of rapidly occurring signals sensed by atrial channels to the ventricles, can be used for the detection of atrial tachyarrhythmias. Such algorithms have been found to be reliable surrogate markers for atrial high rate episodes (AHRE) with a high sensitivity and specificity for AF [13].…”