Local Innervation and Atrial Fibrillation

CIRCULATIONAHA:  10/1/13

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common human arrhythmia in the world and, depending on individual demographics, afflicts from 0.1% to 4% of the general population.¹ With the steady rise of cardiovascular disease in the industrialized world, it is no surprise that the incidence of AF is also increasing.^2,3 However, despite its ubiquitous presence in adult medicine, AF remains an enigmatic disease whose pathophysiology is very complex and incompletely understood. Unlike traditional macroreentrant arrhythmias that arise from better understood electrophysiological substrates, AF is a more complex disease arising from multiple, mutually interacting mechanisms. In part, because of our incomplete understanding of the mechanisms underlying AF, therapeutic success rates in patients treated with either antiarrhythmic drug therapy, catheter-based ablation, or both remain highly variable. Read More