Abstract 9860: Safety and Clinical Outcome of Catheter Ablation of Ventricular Arrhythmias Using Contact Force Sensing, Consecutive Case Series

Abstract

Introduction: Poor catheter-to-myocardial contact can lead to ineffective ablation lesions and suboptimal outcome. Contact force (CF) sensing catheters in ventricular tachycardia (VT) ablations has not been studied for their long term efficacy. Hypothesis: The hypothesis is that CF ablation is superior to manual ablation (MAN) and non-inferior to remote magnetic navigation (RMN) ablation for safety and efficacy in acute and long term outcome. Methods: A total of 249 consecutive patients underwent VT ablation, with the use of MAN, CF or RMN catheters were included in this single center cohort study from January 2007 until March 2014. The primary endpoints were procedural success, acute major complications and VT recurrences at follow-up. The average follow-up period was ± 20 months. Results: Acute success was achieved in 191 out of 249 procedures (75.9%). Acute success in manual ablation, CF ablation and RMN ablation was 70.1%, 72.3% and 85.2% respectively (P = 0.038). Major complications occurred in 3.2% and there was a trend towards less major complications (P = 0.055) in the RMN group. Thirty-six percent of the patients with an initially successful procedure had a recurrence during follow-up (CF 41.2% MAN 37.5% RMN 32.0% P = NS). Conclusions: The use of CF sensing catheters does not improve the procedural outcome or safety profile in comparison to non-CF sensing ablation in ventricular arrhythmias. RMN non-CF sensing ablation has the highest procedural success rate. Future studies are necessary to investigate the role of CF in VT ablation and to define the optimal force.