Current perspectives on curative catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation.

Following the remarkable success of catheter based ablation techniques in curing regular supraventricular tachycardias, the attention of the electrophysiological community has turned upon atrial fibrillation based on the assumption that if surgical incisions with a knife can be duplicated by point by point lesions, a catheter based technique should provide results equivalent to the Maze procedure. Considering that transmurality is an inherent accompaniment of each knife incision, that a surgical atriotomy is much narrower than anything that catheters can currently achieve, and that lesion continuity and placement is assured under direct vision in the surgical field, it is not surprising to note the difficulty encountered in reproducing surgical results by catheter based techniques.