Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation after an unsuccessful surgical ablation and biological prosthetic mitral valve replacement: a pilot study.

Background: Patients with mitral valve (MV) disease and atrial fibrillation (AF) undergo simultaneous prosthetic valve replacement and radiofrequency (RF) ablation procedure; however, this combinational procedure restores sinus rhythm (SR) in only 68-82% of the cases. In patients with ineffective surgical ablation, the use of a biological prosthetic valve might not only be a good choice to perform safe catheter ablation procedure in the left atrium (LA), but also provide a way to discontinue administration of oral anticoagulants. The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of catheter ablation for AF after MV replacement with a biological prosthesis and an ineffective surgical ablation procedure.