Pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) is the cornerstone of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) However AF recurrence after a single ablation procedure is common and often attributed to ineffective lesion delivery during PVI. In this issue of the Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, Chen et al reported their experience with 122 patients who underwent an ablation index-high power (AI-HP) strategy RF ablation for AF using 50W power, targeting AI values of 550 on the anterior left atrium (LA), 400 on the posterior wall and inter-lesion distance (ILD) 6mm. They achieved 1st pass PVI in 96.7% of cases, mean RF time was 11.5min and total procedure time was only 55.8min. All patients had 72h-Holter monitor and trans-telephonic follow up. They reported 89.4% arrhythmia free survival among patients with paroxysmal AF and 80.4% among patients with persistent AF at 15-month follow up. Sixty (49%) patients had luminal esophageal temperature (LET) >390C out of which 3 (2.5%) had asymptomatic endoscopic esophageal erosions/erythema. Four (3%) patients had clinically apparent steam pops during ablation with no adverse clinical sequela. While AI-HP guided RF ablation may be an attractive strategy for PVI that likely reduces procedure times and probably has comparable efficacy to conventional ablation settings, its safety requires further evaluation. Feedback from the ablated tissue may need to be incorporated into optimized ablation energy parameters to further improve outcomes.
