Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation

To the Editor: Wazni et al. (Dec. 15 issue)1 provide a comprehensive review on catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation. However, by presenting the potential complications of atrial fibrillation ablation as reported in international surveys,2 the authors overlooked two important issues. First, they stated that ?cerebrovascular thromboembolism has been reported to occur in up to 2% of patients.? This is true only for symptomatic strokes, but silent ischemic strokes may develop in up to 14% of patients undergoing atrial fibrillation ablation as a result of the procedure.3 Second, the authors did not mention a probably irreversible complication of atrial fibrillation ablation: . . .