Ablation and procedural success
Globally, and excluding the patient in which spontaneous conversion of AF into AT occurred, ablation of rotors or sites with STD was effective in 16/17 patients (rotor ablation success : 94.1%); in 6 patients, conversion to sinus rhythm occurred, whereas in the other 10 patients, ablation resulted in stable AT. Table 2 shows details about the ATs induced in each patient and the ablation strategy performed; 19 macroreentries and 10 microreentries were found; 5 focal ATs appeared. Considering previous ablations and the index procedure, 11 patients (61%) had pulmonary vein isolation, and 15 patients (83%) had CTI ablation.
Procedural success was achieved in 16/18 patients (88.9%). The 2 patients with failed procedure were: the one in which rotor ablation was not effective and electrical cardioversion was needed (empirical pulmonary vein isolation plus CTI ablation was performed); and a patient with successful rotor ablation and subsequent ablation of 2 reentrant ATs, but inducibility of another AT that was not ablated afterwards (it was terminated with entrainment maneuvers and no re-inducibility was attempted). There were no procedural complications. In patients with mappable reentrant ATs, the rate of procedural success (92.4%; p = 0.639) and procedural complications (11.4%; p = 0.200) were similar.