Post-ablation follow-up
In Japan, patients generally undergo routine outpatient follow-up every 1 to 3 months after catheter ablation for AF. During the follow-up periods, 12-lead electrocardiography, 24-h Holter monitoring, or cardiac event recorders are typically employed for detecting arrhythmias. The judgment of an AF recurrence was left to the discretion of the doctors of the respective institutions based on current guidelines,10-12 which describe any documented atrial tachyarrhythmia episode lasting more than 30 s is considered a recurrence. AF recurrence 3 months after catheter ablation was defined as late recurrence, and the isolated occurrence of AF during the 3-month blanking period was treated as nonrecurrence. The study patients were classified into AF recurrence group or AF nonrecurrence group according to the presence or absence of the late AF recurrence.