Methods

Study Design
Our study assessed the effect of catheter type on the success rate and lesion time in patients who underwent AVN ablation. We used a retrospective cohort design for data collection.
Settings and Population
We included all patients who underwent AVN ablation at our institution, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, between 2007-and 2022. Procedures were performed by different operators at our institution.
Data Collection
We have classified the ablation catheters into the following categories: Unirrigated 8 and 10 mm, internally irrigated (Chilli II, Boston Scientific, Marlborough, MA), externally irrigated (Cool Path, Abbott, Minneapolis, MN), externally irrigated force sensing (TactiCath, Abbott, Minneapolis, MN). With force-sensing catheters, lesions were applied with force ranging from 10-20 grams. LPLD settings were power 30W, temperature 45°F, and 60 sec in duration, whereas HPSD settings were power 50W, temperature upper limit 43°C, and 12 sec in duration.
The exact details of the procedure are explained elsewhere(14). Besides procedure-related variables, we collected baseline demographic and patient-related data, including ethnicity, age, sex, and past medical history. Lesion time was defined as the duration of radiofrequency ablation. Successful ablation was defined by documenting the complete AV block.
Data Analysis
Our study compared different catheters in terms of success rate and lesion time. Continuous variables were reported as mean ± standard deviation(SD) in case of a normal distribution or median and interquartile range(IQR) in case of skewed distribution. We used logistic regression to compare the success rate between different catheters and linear logistic regression to compare lesion time. The plain catheter was the reference point. Results were reported as mean along with 95% CI. All statistical analyses were performed using statistical software R version 3.5.0 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria)(15).