Incidence and clinical relevance of upper gastrointestinal pathology during preprocedural endoscopy in patients undergoing pulmonary vein isolation.

Background: Reflux-induced esophagitis might facilitate ablation-induced esophageal lesions (ELs) following pulmonary vein isolation (PVI), and these may progress to atrio-esophageal fistula (AEF). In contrast, preexisting ELs are not prone to progression but may affect procedure planning.

Objective: To study the incidence of preexisting esophageal and upper gastrointestinal (UGI) pathology in patients undergoing PVI, and the relation to ablation-induced ELs.