Population and study design
The present study is approved by the ethics committee of Beijing Anzhen Hospital, and all patients provided written informed consent before the procedure. From July 2018 to Jan 2020, 191 consecutive patients with PeAF undergoing de novo ablation were enrolled. The inclusion criteria were: 1) Age over 18 years; 2) AF persisting over 3 months and less than 3 years; 3) Refractory to at least one class I or III antiarrhythmic drug; 4) No previous history of ablation for AF. Patients enrolled during Jul 2019 and Jan 2020 underwent EI-VOM combined with RF ablation using the ’2C3L’ approach (group 1), while 125 patients enrolled during July 2018 and June 2019 underwent only RF ablation using the ’2C3L’ approach (group 2). The flowchart of the study is shown in Figure 1.