Differences in quality of life between atrial fibrillation patients with low stroke risk treated with and without catheter ablat

Background-impacts of a single radiofrequency ablation (rfa) on quality of life (qol) were not well investigated in atrial fibrillation (af) patients with low stroke risk. methods and results-nine hundred af patients with low chads2 score (ie,chads2 <1) who completed both a baseline and 6- month atrial fibrillation effect on quality-of-life (afeqt) questionnaire were selected from the chinese atrial fibrillation registry between 2011 and 2013. a final cohort of 222 patients was constructed after a propensity score matching with 74 in the rfa group and 148 in the non-rfa group. domains of afeqt were balanced at baseline between the 2 groups. no statistically significant differences were noted in qol (all p>0.05) when afeqt at 6 months was compared between groups,except for the symptoms domain (83.07±12.37 units in the rfa group vs. 77.68±17.14 units in the non-rfa group; p=0.008) and treatment satisfaction domain (76.34±14.92 units in the rfa group vs. 70.38±16.81 units in the non-rfa group; p=0.01). within-group changes in all domains and the global score of the questionnaire were moderate to large,whereas between-group comparisons in baseline to 6-month changes and qol at 6 months were small to moderate according to cohen effect sizes. conclusions-qol was balanced at baseline and improved at 6 months in both groups from this observational propensity-matched cohort based on the afeqt questionnaire. however,rfa treatment was only associated with small-to-moderate superiorities over non-rfa treatment. the role of rfa in qol improvement among af patients with low stroke risk requires further research. © 2015 the authors.