Catheter stability and ablation characteristics
Baseline patient characteristics are provided in Table 1.
Ventricular-paced patients had significantly larger left atrial
diameters (4.9 ± 0.6cm vs
4.4 ± 0.8cm, p = 0.02), but similar
left atrial volume indices (41 ± 15mL/m2 vs 33 ±
8mL/m2, p = 0.14), as well as greater time since
initial diagnosis of AF (4.4 ± 4.7yrs vs 2.5 ± 4.2yrs, p = 0.02),
compared to atrial-paced patients. Otherwise, there were no significant
clinical or echocardiographic differences between the two groups. With
respect to ablation characteristics (Table 2), there were no significant
differences in measures of catheter stability between the atrial-paced
and ventricular-paced patients. Atrial-paced patients had similar mean
catheter excursions (0.79 ± 0.15mm vs 0.77 ± 0.10mm, p = 0.62), maximal
catheter excursions (2.14 ± 0.45mm vs 2.15 ± 0.35mm, p = 0.94), and
contact force variability (4.2 ± 1.0g vs 4.1 ± 0.9g, p = 0.58), compared
to ventricular-paced patients (Figure 2). In addition, the two groups
had similar mean absolute impedance declines
(7.7 ± 1.5ohms vs
7.1 ± 1.7ohms, p = 0.15) and
percentage impedance declines (6.3
± 1.2% vs 5.8 ± 1.2%, p = 0.12).
Ventricular-paced patients had greater average contact forces than
atrial-paced patients (14.5 ± 2.4g vs 13.0 ± 1.7g, p = 0.02) as well as
greater force-time-integrals (FTIs,
107 ± 20gs vs
95 ± 15gs, = 0.02), which was
driven by the greater contact forces.