Characteristics of the study subjects
The study flow chart of the present study is shown in Figure 1. After excluding the patients whose follow-up period was less than one year and performing a propensity score matching, 45 pairs were matched. The baseline clinical characteristics, echocardiographic variables, and biomarkers after the propensity score matching are shown in Table 1. The age, body mass index and baseline eGFR did not differ between the two groups while the serum NT-proBNP level was significantly higher (P=0.04), and more patients were taking β-blockers (P<0.01) in the control group than ablation group. The number of patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) was larger in the ablation group compared to the control group (P=0.02).