A heart procedure performed more than 500,000 times a year worldwide did not improve patients' quality of life any more than a convincing fake version of the same procedure, according to a trial presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Munich and published simultaneously in The Lancet.
The finding matters because symptom relief is the main reason most people with atrial fibrillation are offered catheter ablation in the first place. American patients who have been told the procedure will help them feel better now have large blinded evidence testing that specific promise, and the result did not come out the way most cardiologists expected.
