Аннотация:Since AF is the most common sustained arrhythmia in the western world, showing an increasing incidence (primarily due to ageing of the population), it triggers a heavy financial burden for our health care systems, 5 -8 related to morbidity, hospitalizations, and mortality.Since it has not yet been proved that catheter ablation's outcomes are definitely superior than medical therapy in terms of hard end-points, and considering that economic advantages of catheter ablation with respect to medical therapy of AF emerge only after 5 years, 9 it appears reasonable to restrict the candidates to AF ablation only to selected patients at higher chance of longterm maintenance of sinus rhythm.In view of these considerations, the definition of reliable indexes of successful catheter ablation of AF at long term remains to be assessed.
