Anesthesia management for cardiac catheter ablation: what anesthesiologists should know

Catheter ablation has become a central part of the non-pharmacological treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. It can be performed under conscious sedation, deep sedation, or general anesthesia, but it is getting clear that the incidence of complications during the procedure and the success rate of treatment (with no recurrence of arrhythmia) may be strongly influenced by sedation or anesthesia method. In particular, in sedated patients, ablation procedure may frequently cause severe pain, and the most common adverse events are related to sedation methods. Therefore, anesthesiologists will increasingly be asked to take care of the patients undergoing catheter ablation. In this article, we describe what anesthesiologists should know about ablation procedure and its associated problems, to provide appropriate anesthesia care to patients undergoing catheter ablation.