Patient population and prior ablation procedures
From January 2016 to December 2019, 2311 repeat ablation procedures were performed in the Netherlands across 8 centers, all using radiofrequency ablation (100%). Of these, 274 (12%) met the inclusion criteria of both AF recurrence and durably isolated PVs and were included in the analysis. See Figure 2 for a detailed flowchart of the study cohort.
The detailed baseline characteristics of the final population are presented in Table 1. The included patients had a median age of 66 years (IQR: 58-70), 44.2% were women, and the median CHA2DS2-VASc score was 2.0 (IQR: 1.0-3.0). Of all patients, 54.4% had paroxysmal AF and 45.6% had persistent forms of AF. Patients with paroxysmal and persistent AF exhibited similar characteristics, except for a significant difference in the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD) (4.1% vs. 11.5%), weight [81 (72-96) vs. 89 (80-98)] and hypertension (45.5% vs. 62.1%) (for all: p<0.05; see Appendix Table 1A).