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Table 1 Summary of patient characteristics. PV encirclement We found that ablation-induced scarring formed a contiguous PFKM line around all four veins in only 15 of 172 patients (8.7%). A large proportion of patients (76/172 or 44%) had none of their vein antra completely encircled with ablation scar. Figure 3 shows two examples of scarring around the PV antra and illustrates the distribution of patients in groups according to the number of pulmonary antra encircled. Residual fibrosis After subtracting the ablated areas from the baseline atrial scan, the residual fibrosis was calculated. The average residual fibrosis was found to be 11.9 �� 7.3%. High residual fibrosis was defined as ��10% of the left atrial wall. In all, 85 of 172 patients (49.4%) had high residual fibrosis compared to 87 patients (50.6%) who did not. Overall ablation-induced scarring was not significantly different in patients with high residual fibrosis compared to those without high residual fibrosis (12.5 �� 7.7 vs 13.6 �� 6.3; P = 0.24). Other baseline comorbidities, including age, gender, prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, and persistent AF, were not significantly different in patients with and without high residual fibrosis. Arrhythmia recurrence Following an average follow-up of 346 �� 82 days, sustained atrial arrhythmia was observed in 60 patients (34.9%) after observing a 90-day blanking period. The mean time to AF recurrence selleck inhibitor post blanking was 160 �� 68 days. Recurrence was observed in 9 patients in stage I (13.2%), 23 patients in stage II (39.7%), 22 patients in stage III (59.5%), and 6 patients in stage IV (66.7%). The recurrence rate was significantly different across the stages (P 10%), 44 of 85 patients (51.8%) BLZ945 mw had recurrent AF compared to 16 of 86 patients without high residual fibrosis (18.4%); P the role of baseline and residual fibrosis in predicting arrhythmia recurrence using Cox proportional hazards models. In univariate analysis, fibrosis stage classification was a significant predictor of AF recurrence (hazard ratio [HR] of 1.9; P
