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Surgical Ablation

Surgical ablationof atrial fibrillation is a safe and effective procedure in restoring sinus rhythm with excellent postoperative survival rates.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common heart arrhythmia that increases a patient's risk of stroke and has a significant negative impact on quality of life; however, it is an arrhythmia that historically has had few effective treatment options. Side effects associated with anti-arrhythmic drugs and the inadequacy of a rate-control strategy in highly symptomatic patients led researchers to investigate new ways of treating this disorder.

AF ablation is currently one of the most promising treatment options, but this field is still in the early stages of its evolution. Although outcomes following both surgical and catheter-based AF ablation are steadily improving, there is no real consensus about which patients are the most appropriate candidates for ablation, or whether one technique is superior to another. Moreover, new technologies continue to refine these procedures. The field of surgical AF ablation, in particular, is an area that has witnessed a remarkable evolution over the past several years, from the use of highly invasive "cut and sew" techniques to new methods that employ energy-based probes in a minimally invasive, beating-heart procedure.