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Updated: Feb 8, 2026

Direct Pressure Monitoring Accurately Predicts Pulmonary Vein Occlusion During Cryoballoon Ablation
Published on: February 26, 2013
Time-to-effect guided pulmonary vein isolation utilizing the third-generation versus second generation cryoballoon:
Christian-Hendrik Heeger1,2,3, Christopher Schuette4, Valentina Seitelberger4
1University Heart Center Luebeck, Medical Clinic II (Department of Cardiology, Angiology and Intensive Care Medicine), Sektion Elektropjysiologie, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. christian.heeger@gmx.net.
Background:
The second-generation cryoballoon (CB2) provides effective and durable pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) associated with encouraging and reproducible clinical outcome data. The latest- -generation cryoballoon (CB3) incorporates a 40% shorter distal tip, thus allowing for an increased rate of PVI real-time signal recording and facilitating individualized ablation strategies taking the time-to- -effect (TTE) into account. However, whether this characteristic translates into favorable clinical success has not been evaluated yet. Herein was investigated 1-year clinical success after CB3 in comparison to CB2 based-PVI.
Methods:
One hundred and ten consecutive patients with paroxysmal or short-standing persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) underwent CB2 (n = 55 patients) -or CB3 (n = 55 patients) -based PVI. The freeze-cycle duration was set to TTE + 120 s if TTE could be recorded, otherwise a fixed freeze-cycle duration of 180 s was applied.
Results:
A total of 217/218 (99%, CB3) and 217/217 (100%, CB2) pulmonary veins (PV) were successfully isolated. The real-time PVI visualization rate was 69.2% (CB3) and 54.8% (CB2; p = 0.0392). The mean freeze-cycle duration was 194 ± 77 s (CB3) and 206 ± 85 s (CB2; p = 0.132), respectively. During a median follow-up of 409 days (interquartile range [IQR] 378-421, CB3) and 432 days (IQR 394-455, CB2) 73.6% (CB3) and 73.1% of patients (CB2) remained in stable sinus rhythm after a single procedure (p = 0.806).
Conclusions:
A higher rate of real-time electrical PV recordings was seen using the CB3 as compared to CB2. There was no difference in 1-year clinical follow-up.
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