Design of an Outpatient Atrial Fibrillation of Excellence: Current Experience with the Deliver of Pre and Post Procedure Care.

The population of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) continues to expand and emerges to be the most common arrhythmia we deal with. Referrals to centers performing catheter based ablation procedures for AF also continue to grow as catheter ablation becomes an increasingly accepted therapeutic approach. In this article we will describe the infrastructure we have developed to manage our atrial fibrillation ablation population at the Richard and Annette Bloch Heart Rhythm Center at the University of Kansas Hospital. Our goal is to provide a “nuts and bolts” overview from the allied health professional perspective. For concise reviews of AF management we recommend the ACC/AHA/EFC 2006 guidelines and the HRS/ EHRA/ECAS expert consensus statement on catheter and surgical ablation of atrial fibrillation .1,2