Figure 1.
(A) Catheter tips of both catheters. The FlexibilityTMSE ablation catheter has a laser-cut 4-mm flexible 8Fr tip, which is
irrigated from the proximal to distal end through the laser-cut kerfs.
The TactiCathTM SE ablation catheter has a 3.5-mm 8Fr
tip and has 6-hole irrigation holes on the side of the tip. Both
catheters have a single thermocouple embedded within the tip for
temperature monitoring, and the distance from the tip is 0.3mm in the
FlexAbilityTM SE catheter and 2.64mm in the
TactiCathTM SE catheter.
(B) Scheme of catheter orientation. The catheter was placed
perpendicularly or parallelly to the tissue.
(C) Scheme of the surface and cross-sectioned lesion. Surface area and
lesion volume were calculated from the following formulae:
surface area = π × a/2 × b/2.
lesion volume = (1/6) × π × (e2 × d + c×
a2/2).