Heart Failure, Atrial Fibrillation, and Catheter Ablation

Contemporary cardiological practice places great emphasis on the availability of an evidence base to justify and refine indications for treatment. This is particularly apposite to the field of catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF), where almost 2 decades of research at an increasingly frenetic pace has delivered us a potentially curative treatment in carefully selected patients. In drug refractory patients, there is now consensus that catheter ablation is recommended in paroxysmal AF, reasonable in persistent AF, and might be considered in longstanding persistent AF (1,2). It is also deemed reasonable to consider catheter ablation in all AF patient groups before a trial of drug therapy (2).