Mo749catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation in patients with chronic kidney disease and on dialysis - a meta-analysis

Abstract Background and Aims Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients and is difficult to treat with antiarrhythmics and anticoagulants due to abnormal metabolism and increased side effects. Catheter ablation if successful may be a safer alternative. This review evaluates the efficacy of catheter ablation therapy in CKD and haemodialysis (HD) patients. Method MEDLINE and Embase databases were searched with the following search terms: “(atrial fibrillation AND (chronic kidney disease OR renal failure OR renal function OR dialysis) AND ablation)” for journal articles of any language until December 2020. Two authors abstracted the data independently. Risk ratios were derived using random-effects meta-analysis. Results Of the initially identified 520 studies, 5 and 3 observational studies on CKD and HD patients respectively were found reporting AF recurrence rates. During a mean (SD) follow-up of 25.5 (9.8) months, CKD patients had a higher risk of AF recurrence compared to patients without CKD (RR 2.34, 95% CI 1.36-4.02, p<0.01). The heterogenicity test showed there were significant differences between individual studies (I2 = 91%, 95% CI 82.2%-95.6%, p<0.01). In a mean (SD) follow-up of 40.3 (20.8) months, HD patients may be at a higher risk of AF recurrence compared to healthy non-dialysis AF patients (RR 1.21, 95% CI 0.64-2.30, p=0.55). Heterogeneity analysis showed the studies were heterogeneous (I2 92.3%, 95% CI 80.8%-96.9%, p <0.01). Conclusion Our meta-analysis suggests patients with CKD and patients on HD are more likely to have AF recurrences after catheter ablation compared to AF patients who are otherwise healthy. However, more robust evidence from randomized controlled trials comparing catheter ablation and pharmaceutical rhythm therapy are urgently needed to guide therapy in this difficult to treat population.