Open AccessCollateral findings during computed tomography scan for atrial fibrillation ablation: Let’s take a look around
Author(s) -
Francesco Perna,
Michela Casella,
Maria Lucia Narducci,
Antonio Dello Russo,
Gianluigi Bencardino,
Gianluca Pontone,
Gemma Pelargonio,
Daniele Andreini,
Nicola Vitulano,
Francesca Pizzamiglio,
Edoardo Conte,
Filippo Crea,
Claudio Tondo
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
world journal of cardiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1949-8462
DOI - 10.4330/wjc.v8.i4.310
Subject(s) - medicine , collateral , atrial fibrillation , catheter ablation , collateral damage , ablation , radiology , computed tomography , cardiology , cardiac ablation , stage (stratigraphy) , finance , paleontology , criminology , sociology , biology , economics
The growing number of atrial fibrillation catheter ablation procedures warranted the development of advanced cardiac mapping techniques, such as image integration between electroanatomical map and cardiac computed tomography. While scanning the chest before catheter ablation, it is frequent to detect cardiac and extracardiac collateral findings. Most collateral findings are promptly recognized as benign and do not require further attention. However, sometimes clinically relevant collateral findings are detected, which often warrant extra diagnostic examinations or even invasive procedure, and sometimes need to be followed-up over time. Even though reporting and further investigating collateral findings has not shown a clear survival benefit, almost all the working groups providing data on collateral findings reported some collateral findings eventually coming out to be malignancies, sometimes at an early stage. Therefore, there is currently no clear agreement about the right strategy to be followed.