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).