Health Outcomes With Catheter Ablation or Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy in Atrial Fibrillation

Therapies Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Results of a Propensity-Matched Analysis

Matthew R. Reynolds, MD, MSc, Candace L. Gunnarsson, EdD, Tina D. Hunter, PhD,Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD, Jamie L. March, MBA, Mingdong Zhang, MD, MPH, PhD and Steven C. Hao, MD – February 28, 2012.

Abstract

Background Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) face significant risks of stroke and heart failure. The objective of this study was to determine whether AF ablation reduces the long-term risk of stroke or heart failure compared with antiarrhythmic drug therapy.

Methods and Results A coding algorithm was used to identify AF patients treated with catheter ablation (n=3194) or antiarrhythmic drugs without ablation (n=6028) between 2005 and 2009 using The MarketScan Research Database from Thomson Reuters From this sample, 801 pairs were propensity matched, based on 15 demographic and clinical characteristics and baseline medication use. Rates of stroke/transient ischemic attack (TIA) and heart failure hospitalizations for up to 3 years were examined.  Read More

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