Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion Debate Revisited

Left atrial appendage occlusion debate revisited.

756 T he left atrial appendage (LAA) has been deemed by some to be our " most lethal attachment, " and the concept of excluding it from systemic circulation has been thought to hold great promise. This concept has been around since 1948, when John Madden 1 proclaimed it a plausible therapy for recurrent emboli in atrial fibrillation. Despite this, higher-quality evidence in the field is only ju...

A Semi-Automated Algorithm for Segmentation of the Left Atrial Appendage Landing Zone: Application in Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion Procedures

Background: Mechanical occlusion of the Left atrial appendage (LAA) using a purpose-built device has emerged as an effective prophylactic treatment in patients with atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke and a contraindication for anticoagulation. A crucial step in procedural planning is the choice of the device size. This is currently based on the manual analysis of the “Device Landing Zone” fr...

Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion

Left atrial appendage (LAA) occlusion is a treatment strategy to prevent blood clot formation in atrial appendage. Although, LAA occlusion usually was done by catheter-based techniques, especially percutaneous trans-luminal mitral commissurotomy (PTMC), it can be done during closed and open mitral valve commissurotomy (CMVC, OMVC) and mitral valve replacement (MVR) too. Nowadays, PTMC is perfor...

Left atrial appendage occlusion procedures

Cost-Effectiveness of Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion

The idea that mechanical intervention to close the left atrial appendage (LAA) might reduce complications from atrial fibrillation (AF) is at least 70 years old. Early attempts to test this idea in humans with surgical ligation were abandoned after only a few years for 2 reasons. First, proponents soon realized that they had no way to choose the candidates believed most likely to benefit withou...