AF Ablation reduces incidence of stroke and death

[MarkS]

A new study in Sweden has shown that patients who have had ablations had a 30% lower risk of a stroke and 50% lower risk of dying compared with non-ablated patients.

See: medscape.com/viewarticle/86...

Mark

[Cclegg]

This is something all of us ablatees like to hear!! Very interesting thanks for sharing.

[reedman]

Thanks for the link, interesting read. But, the conclusion by the reseachers was not as conclusive as you state. They wrote of their results as an association rather than a causal link. Their conclusion reads:

"Ablation may be associated with lower incidence of ischaemic stroke and death in patients with AF. This finding appears more pronounced in patients with more thromboembolic risk factors or without long-term anticoagulation."

This would seem to suggest that those of us diagnosed with AF who have not been ablated but take long-term anticoagulation as not as at risk as the headline to this post might suggest.

[MarkS in reply to reedman]

Yes, I was abbreviating the title of the article: "Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation Is Associated With Lower Incidence of Stroke and Death". It does seem to work best for those with some risk factors. For those with a CHADS2VASC score of 2 or more, the reduction in stroke risk was 61%. There is still a reduction in stroke risk for anti-coagulated patients but it is less significant.

So the conclusion would seem to be that if you have a risk score of 0 or 1 and are anti-coagulated then there is little to be gained from an ablation in terms of reduction in stroke risk alone.

However, interestingly, the chance of dying was still twice in the non-ablated group and this was independent of risk score and anti-coagulation status.

Of course this was not a proper double blind trial and there are all sorts of factors that could come into play.