Moussa Mansour, Vivek Y Reddy, Edward Karst, Edwin Kevin Heist, Douglas L Packer, Nirav Dalal, Rahul Agarwal, Hugh Calkins, Jeremy N Ruskin, Srijoy Mahapatra
AIMS: The TactiCath Contact Force Ablation Catheter Study for Atrial Fibrillation (TOCCASTAR) clinical trial compared clinical outcomes using a contact force (CF) sensing ablation catheter (TactiCath) with a catheter that lacked CF measurement. This analysis links recorded events in the TOCCASTAR study and a large claims database, IBM MarketScan®, to determine the economic impact of using CF sensing during atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. METHODS AND RESULTS: Clinical events including repeat ablation, use of antiarrhythmic drugs, hospitalization, perforation, pericarditis, pneumothorax, pulmonary edema, pulmonary vein stenosis, tamponade, and vascular access complications were adjudicated in the year after ablation...
September 23, 2019: Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology