Recurrence of Atrial Fibrillation After Catheter Ablation or Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy in the CABANA Trial.

Abstract

Background

The CABANA (Catheter Ablation Versus Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation) trial randomized 2,204 patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) to catheter ablation or drug therapy. Analysis by intention-to-treat showed a nonsignificant 14% relative reduction in the primary outcome of death, disabling stroke, serious bleeding, or cardiac arrest.

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to assess recurrence of AF in the CABANA trial.

Methods

The authors prospectively studied CABANA patients using a proprietary electrocardiogram recording monitor for symptom-activated and 24-h AF auto detection. The AF recurrence endpoint was any post-90-day blanking atrial tachyarrhythmias lasting 30 s or longer. Biannual 96-h Holter monitoring was used to assess AF burden. Patients who used the CABANA monitors and provided 90-day post-blanking recordings qualified for this analysis (n = 1,240; 56% of CABANA population). Treatment comparisons were performed using a modified intention-to-treat approach.

Results

Median age of the 1,240 patients was 68 years, 34.4% were women, and AF was paroxysmal in 43.0%. Over 60 months of follow-up, first recurrence of any symptomatic or asymptomatic AF (hazard ratio: 0.52; 95% confidence interval: 0.45 to 0.60; p < 0.001) or first symptomatic-only AF (hazard ratio: 0.49; 95% confidence interval: 0.39 to 0.61; p < 0.001) were both significantly reduced in the catheter ablation group. Baseline Holter AF burden in both treatment groups was 48%. At 12 months, AF burden in ablation patients averaged 6.3%, and in drug-therapy patients, 14.4%. AF burden was significantly less in catheter ablation compared with drug-therapy patients across the 5-year follow-up (p < 0.001). These findings were not sensitive to the baseline pattern of AF.

Conclusions

Catheter ablation was effective in reducing recurrence of any AF by 48% and symptomatic AF by 51% compared with drug therapy over 5 years of follow-up. Furthermore, AF burden was also significantly reduced in catheter ablation patients, regardless of their baseline AF type. (Catheter Ablation vs Anti-arrhythmic Drug Therapy for Atrial Fibrillation Trial [CABANA]; NCT00911508).

Department

Description

Provenance

Citation

Published Version (Please cite this version)

10.1016/j.jacc.2020.04.065

Publication Info

Poole, Jeanne E, Tristram D Bahnson, Kristi H Monahan, George Johnson, Hoss Rostami, Adam P Silverstein, Hussein R Al-Khalidi, Yves Rosenberg, et al. (2020). Recurrence of Atrial Fibrillation After Catheter Ablation or Antiarrhythmic Drug Therapy in the CABANA Trial. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 75(25). pp. 3105–3118. 10.1016/j.jacc.2020.04.065 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31119.

This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.

Scholars@Duke

Bahnson

Tristram Dan Bahnson

Professor of Medicine
Al-Khalidi

Hussein Rashid Al-Khalidi

Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics

My research interest includes design and analysis of cardiovascular clinical trials, medical devices, survival analysis, group-sequential analysis, time-to-recurrent or multiple events, continuous-time Markov models, stochastic process, linear model, dose-response modeling, design of experiments and adaptive designs.

Mark

Daniel Benjamin Mark

Professor of Medicine

Dr. Mark is a clinical cardiologist with the rank of Professor of Medicine (with tenure) as well as Vice Chief for Academic Affairs in the Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center. He is also the Director of Outcomes Research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. He has been on the full-time faculty at Duke since 1985. Prior to that he completed his cardiology fellowship at Duke, his residency and internship at the University of Virginia Hospital, and received his medical degree from Tufts University and his Master’s degree from Harvard. In 1998, he was given the honor of being elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigators and in 2002 he was honored by election to the Association of American Physicians. These organizations are the two most prestigious honor societies in academic medicine. In 2009, Dr. Mark was awarded the American College of Cardiology Distinguished Scientist Award.

Dr. Mark's major research interests include medical economics and quality of life outcomes, outcomes research, and quality of medical care. Currently, Dr. Mark is directing a number of outcomes analyses for ongoing clinical trials including PROMISE (anatomic versus functional testing for coronary artery disease, NIH), CABANA (catheter ablation versus antiarrhythmic drug therapy for atrial fibrillation, NIH), ISCHEMIA (percutaneous coronary intervention versus optimal medical therapy for moderate-severe ischemia), and STICH (CABG +/- ventricular reconstruction versus medical therapy for ischemic heart disease, NIH). He was the principal author of the AHCPR Unstable Angina Guidelines and is a co-author of both the American College of Cardiology Guideline on Exercise Testing and their Coronary Stent Consensus Guideline. He is also the Editor of the American Heart Journal. Dr. Mark has published over 270 peer-reviewed articles, two books, and 80 book chapters. He lectures widely in the US, as well as in Canada, South America, and Europe.

Keywords: cost-effectiveness analysis, disease management, quality of life assessment, resource use.


Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.