Successful pulmonary vein isolation using transvenous catheter cryoablation improves quality-of-life in patients with atrial fibrillation.

Background: Recent studies have demonstrated that transvenous catheter cryoablation is a safe and effective technique for creating pulmonary veins (PVs) electrical isolation for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). However, the impacts of this procedure on quality-of-life (QoL) have not been evaluated.

Methods And Results: We studied the effects of PV isolation using transvenous catheter cryoablation on QoL in 46 patients (34 men, mean age: 50 +/- 12 years) with drug-refractory AF. QoL was assessed by Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 (SF-36) and Symptom Checklist at baseline and 3-month after cryoablation, and compared with those in a sex-age matched normal control. At 3-month follow-up, 24 of 46 patients (52%) had no recurrence of AF, including 11 patients who were not taking antiarrhythmic drugs. At baseline, patients with AF had significantly lower QoL scores in overall and in 5/8 subscales of SF-36 than the sex-age matched control group (P < 0.05). In patients with successful outcome after cryoablation showed a significant improvement in overall and in 5/8 subscales of SF-36 QoL scores have significantly increased as compared with the baseline (P < 0.05). Furthermore, their QoL scores in overall and in 6/8 subscales of SF-36 were similar to the sex-age matched control group (P > 0.05). The Symptom Checklist also showed significant reduction in both the symptoms frequency scores and symptoms severity scores at 3-month follow-up as compared with baseline (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Successful PV isolation using transvenous catheter cryoablation is associated with significant reduction in the frequency and severity of AF symptoms and improvement in the general QoL, reaching the levels of normal controls.