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Original Articles: Adult Cardiac

Invited Commentary

Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, 9200 W Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53226

(Email: smasroor@mcw.edu).

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Results of surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF) are more difficult to interpret than those of catheter ablation or medical therapy. They typically do not have the hundreds of patients found in cardiology trials. Therefore, the benefit has to be substantially larger to generate the same p value. On the other hand, the patients are sicker and more symptomatic, with longer duration of AF and multiple failed therapies. Many patients undergo concomitant cardiac surgery. Hence, improvement in quality of life (QOL) is more likely to be observed, but harder to attribute solely to cure of AF, rather than . . . [Full Text of this Article]