Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation in elderly patients: Systematic review and a meta-analysis

Catheter ablation (CA) is established therapy for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF); however, there is a limited understanding of CA in elderly patients. We studied the long-term efficacy and periprocedural safety of radiofrequency and cryoballoon CA for elderly patients with AF.

PubMed and Embase were searched through April 2021 to investigate the comparative outcomes between elderly and non-elderly patients who underwent CA for AF. The primary efficacy and safety endpoints were AF recurrence and procedure-related complications, respectively. Subgroup analyses were performed by procedure type of CA.

The search identified 20 observational studies with 110,606 patients, including 8009 elderly patients (7.2%). The risk of AF recurrence was not significantly different between elderly and non-elderly patients (hazard ratio, 1.37; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.94-2.00; p = .10, I²  = 70%). However, relative to the non-elderly, elderly patients had significantly higher major complications (risk ratio [RR], 1.32; 95% CI, 1.14-1.54], p < .01, I²  = 0%) and overall complications (RR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.00-1.57; p = .05, I²  = 56%) with higher cerebrovascular events (RR, 1.68; 95% CI, 1.25-2.25; p = < .01, I²  = 0%). Subgroup analysis with cryoballoon CA showed that procedure-related complications in elderly patients were similar to those in non-elderly patients but not with radiofrequency CA.

CA for AF in elderly patients has comparable long-term efficacy compared to that in non-elderly patients; however, the incidence of procedure-related complications were higher in elderly patients. Cryoballoon CA did not confer a higher procedure-related risk in elderly patients.