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12492606 tn?1459874033

Ablation specialist - How picky should you be?

That is a rhetorical question.  Below is a tabulation of complication rates between 4 different classifications AF ablation centers.   Tertiary referral worldwide centers, a large survey of private and medicare centers, bottom 50% medicare centers and overall medicare centers.  Data is from Cappato el al worldwide survey, Desmukh el al US data set and Winkle's analysis of US medicare data.  Only major complications are included.  The more detailed table is at lone Afib forum site.  In percent of patients.  The really shocking statistic from Desmukh's survey was that 81% of the ablation procedures were done at centers that do less than 25 AF ablation per year.  Heart Rhythm society guidelines indicate that minimum competency requires 100 procedures per year.   Be careful out there.

Death                         0.15 0.42 0.65 0.4
Tamponade                  1.31 2.54 3.15 3.1
Pneumothorax                 0.09 0.39 0.55 0.4
Total vascular below         0.54 5.8 5.7 5.7
Valve damage/requiring surgery 0.07 0.28 0.4 0.4
Stroke                                0.23 included below 0.4 0.4
Transient ischemic attack        0.71 1.02                         0.3 0.2
Total major                                 4.54 6.28 9.15 9.1
Best Answer
86819 tn?1378947492
No. People should be careful no question. Very interesting thanks for posting this info.  Just curious,  what does total vascular below refer to?
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12492606 tn?1459874033
It should just have been "total vascular" in the message posted here.  In the spreadsheet, researchers used different descriptors for various complications and some numbers had to be added up for comparison purposes.  The cut and paste didn't transfer in this case.  A better formatted version of the table is available at lone afib forum.
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