Advances in the Application of Pulsed Field Ablation for Arrhythmia Treatment

Abstract

The increased application of catheter ablation to treat cardiac arrhythmias has contributed to continued exploration of safe and effective tissue ablation tools in the field of electrophysiology. Pulsed field ablation (PFA), a novel recently developed non-thermal energy-based technique, uses trains of microsecond duration high-amplitude pulses to ablate target cells. Several preclinical and clinical studies have demonstrated that PFA is a promising tool for cardiac ablation to treat arrhythmia. In addition to being an effective tissue ablation technique, PFA is safe, because it avoids damage to the surrounding cells/tissues. This review focuses on efficacy and safety outcomes reported in preclinical and clinical studies evaluating the effects of PFA on arrhythmia, and discusses limitations and potential future directions of PFA.