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WEDNESDAY, May 8, 2019 (HealthDay News) — For morbidly obese patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), those undergoing preablation bariatric surgery have reduced rates of recurrence, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the Heart Rhythm Society, held from May 8 to 11 in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Eoin Donnellan, M.D., from the Cleveland Clinic, and colleagues examined the impact of preablation bariatric surgery on AF recurrence after ablation in a cohort of 239 morbidly obese patients. Fifty-one patients had undergone bariatric surgery prior to AF ablation. During a mean follow-up of 36.31 months after ablation, recurrence data were obtained.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that 19.6 percent of patients in the bariatric surgery group and 60.6 percent in the non-bariatric surgery group had recurrent AF. Overall, 11.8 and 41 percent of patients in the bariatric surgery and non-bariatric surgery groups, respectively, underwent repeat ablation. Only bariatric surgery was an independent predictor of arrhythmia-free survival in multivariate analysis (hazard ratio, 0.081); the significance was retained after adjustment for percentage of weight loss.<\/p>\n
“The results show that clinicians should consider referring their patients for bariatric surgery prior to undergoing an ablation to significantly lower the rate of recurrence. After seeing more than a three-fold reduction rate, it shows that bariatric surgery should be considered a feasible option to help improve the patient’s quality of life,” Donnellan said in a statement.<\/p>\n
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