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. 2024 Jan;47(1):124-126.
doi: 10.1111/pace.14859. Epub 2023 Oct 21.

Can phrenic nerve injury be anticipated by larger cryoballoons?

Kentaro Goto  1 , Shinsuke Miyazaki  1 , Takuro Nishimura  1 , Tomomasa Takamiya  1 , Susumu Tao  1 , Masateru Takigawa  1 , Tetsuo Sasano  1
Affiliations

Can phrenic nerve injury be anticipated by larger cryoballoons?

Kentaro Goto et al. Pacing Clin Electrophysiol. 2024 Jan.

Abstract

Recently, a novel size-adjustable cryoballoon has been introduced in clinical practice, which can be inflated to two different diameters (28 and 31 mm). The 31 mm cryoballoon is specifically designed to achieve better contact with remodeled pulmonary veins (PVs) that have wider ostia while avoiding deep cannulation, thereby potentially reducing the risk of phrenic nerve injury (PNI) associated with deep balloon cannulation. However, we encountered two cases of PNI during cryoballoon ablation using the novel system among our initial 25 consecutive case series. Herein, we present two cases that exhibited PNI during freezing of the right superior PV with a size-adjustable balloon. While larger balloons are expected to create a larger area of isolation, the safety of this novel balloon system needs to be evaluated in a large-scale clinical study.

Keywords: atrial fibrillation; phrenic nerve injury; size-adjustable cryoballoon.

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References

REFERENCES

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