Atrial conduit function quantitation precardioversion predicts early arrhythmia recurrence in persistent atrial fibrillation patients

Aims Atrial fibrillation incidence is increasing due to ageing population and electrical cardioversion (ECV) is overused because of atrial fibrillation recurrences. Study's aim was to evaluate value of novel three-dimensional echocardiographic-derived left atrial conduit (LAC) function quantification in predicting early atrial fibrillation recurrence after ECV. Methods We included 106 patients [74 (64–78) years] who underwent ECV for persistent nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. For all clinical data and simultaneous left atrial and left ventricular (LV) three-dimensional full-volume data sets were available before ECV. We computed LAC as: [(LV maximum − LV minimum) − (left atrial maximum − left atrial minimum) volume], expressed as % LV stroke volume. Atrial fibrillation recurrence was checked with Holter monitoring. Results One month after ECV 66 patients were in sinus rhythm and 40 experienced atrial fibrillation recurrence. Pre-ECV patients with atrial fibrillation recurrence showed higher LAC contribution to LV filling (P 
Source: Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine - Category: Cardiology Tags: Research articles: Arrhythmias Source Type: research