High risk in atrial fibrillation following an ablation procedure: the wide usefulness of the CHADS(2) score.

Evaluation of: Chao TF, Ambrose K, Tsao HM et al. Relationship between the CHADS(2) score and risk of very late recurrences after catheter ablation of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Heart Rhythm 9(8), 1185-1191 (2012). Limited data are available on the predictors of adverse events and recurrences in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) after catheter ablation. In a retrospective analysis of 238 patients with paroxysmal AF treated with catheter ablation, it was found that the congestive heart failure, hypertension, age >75 years, diabetes and previous stroke/transient ischemic attack (CHADS(2)) score was an independent predictor of AF recurrences. Moreover, among patients without recurrences at 2 years post-ablation, future recurrence rate during the subsequent follow-up was 64% in those with a CHADS(2) score of less than three, while it was only 3% in patients with a CHADS(2) score of zero. Patients with a higher CHADS(2) score have a different substrate, a more marked disease in the atrium and this may explain the higher rate of recurrence observed after AF ablation. Several more complex scores are available to separately identify the risk of different events in AF: stroke and embolic events, bleeding events, AF recurrences and progression to more sustained forms of AF. Whether it is a better strategy to use the simple CHADS(2) score to rapidly identify a global risk of all future events in AF more widely remains to be determined.