Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Oct 23:55:101541.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijcha.2024.101541. eCollection 2024 Dec.

Temporal trends of catheter ablation procedures in patients with atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter: A nationwide cohort study

Antti Lappalainen  1 , Juha E K Hartikainen  1 , Konsta Teppo  2 , Olli Halminen  3   4 , Aapo L Aro  5 , Rasmus Siponen  6 , Janne Virrankorpi  7 , Annukka Marjamaa  5 , Birgitta Salmela  8 , Jukka Putaala  9 , Pirjo Mustonen  2 , Miika Linna  3   4 , Jari Haukka  7 , K E Juhani Airaksinen  2 , Mika Lehto  10
Affiliations

Temporal trends of catheter ablation procedures in patients with atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter: A nationwide cohort study

Antti Lappalainen et al. Int J Cardiol Heart Vasc. .

Abstract

Background: Catheter ablation is a well-established treatment to prevent atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL) recurrences and to relieve symptoms, whereas pacemaker implantation and atrioventricular node (AVN) ablation is used for rate control when medical therapy fails.

Aims: We investigated temporal trends and patient characteristics in catheter ablation procedures for AF, AFL and AVN in Finland between 2012-2018.

Methods: Finnish AntiCoagulation in Atrial Fibrillation (FinACAF) is a registry-based study including all patients with AF or AFL in Finland between 2012-2018.

Results: The number of patients with AF or AFL diagnosis in Finland increased from 185 057 to 243 802 between 2012-2018 and a total of 8954 first-time catheter ablation procedures were performed. Of them, 4909 (54.8 %) were AF ablations, 2731 (30.5 %) AFL ablations and 1314 (14.7 %) AVN ablations. The procedural numbers increased from 457/year to 934/year for AF, from 223/year to 553/year for AFL and from 114/year to 238/year for AVN. Altogether, 0.65% of all patients with diagnosed AF or AFL underwent AF, AFL or AVN ablation in 2018. The mean age of the patients increased in all ablation groups. Patients undergoing AF and AFL ablations were predominantly men (69.7 % and 74.6 % respectively) whereas patients undergoing AVN ablation were more often women (56.9%).

Conclusions: The use of catheter ablation more than doubled during 2012-2018 and the increase was particularly seen in the elderly patients. Nevertheless, only a minority of AF and AFL patients were treated with catheter ablations.

Keywords: Atrial fibrillation; Atrial flutter; Catheter ablation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Proportion of patients with first-time catheter ablations in total AF and AFL population by year.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
First-time catheter ablations by year: atrial fibrillation ablations (top), atrial flutter ablations (middle) and atrioventricular node ablations (bottom).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Proportion of patients that had used beta-blockers, flecainide, amiodarone, dronedarone or sotalol within a year before the first ablation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Lehto M., Haukka J., Aro A., Halminen O., Putaala J., Linna M., et al. Comprehensive nationwide incidence and prevalence trends of atrial fibrillation in Finland. Open Heart. 2022;9:e002140. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lehto M., Halminen O., Mustonen P., Putaala J., Linna M., Kinnunen J., et al. The nationwide Finnish anticoagulation in atrial fibrillation (FinACAF): Study rationale, design, and patient characteristics. Eur. J. Epidemiol. 2022;37:95–102. doi: 10.1007/s10654-021-00812-x. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Krijthe B.P., Kunst A., Benjamin E.J., Lip G.Y.H., Franco O.H., Hofman A., et al. Projections on the number of individuals with atrial fibrillation in the European Union, from 2000 to 2060. Eur. Heart J. 2013;34:2746–2751. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/eht280. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Colilla S., Crow A., Petkun W., Singer D.E., Simon T., Liu X. Estimates of current and future incidence and prevalence of atrial fibrillation in the U.S. adult population. Am. J. Cardiol. 2013;112:1142–1147. doi: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2013.05.063. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Hindricks G., Potpara T., Dagres N., Arbelo E., Bax J.J., Blomström-Lundqvist C., et al. 2020 ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of atrial fibrillation developed in collaboration with the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) Eur. Heart J. 2021;42:373–498. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa612. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources