Introduction
Isolated premature ventricular complexes (PVCs) are the most common
arrhythmias observed in daily clinical practice in even patients without
structural heart
disease1. Many patients
with PVCs often experience disabling symptoms and sometimes need
long-term antiarrhythmic medications. In recent years, radiofrequency
catheter ablation (RFCA) has proven to be a safe and successful therapy
for arrhythmias including
PVCs1,
2. Moreover, we previously and recently
reported the clinical benefit of RFCA of PVCs from the right ventricular
outflow tract
(RVOT-PVCs)1, which are
one of the most common types of PVCs, and from near
His-bundle2, which are a
comparably uncommon type of PVC. In particular, eliminating frequent
RVOT-PVCs by RFCA could steadily reverse RVOT-PVC induced left
ventricular (LV) dilation, which is known to be a risk factor for LV
dysfunction and congestive heart
failure3. Although the
PVCs from near the mitral annulus (MA) (MA-PVCs) are also comparably
uncommon, they also often cause a deterioration of the patients’
clinical status. Further, it is still unknown whether MA-PVCs cause LA
dilation and / or dysfunction. Thus, the purpose of this study was
two-fold and was 1) to examine whether frequent MA-PVCs may cause LV
dilation and / or dysfunction and 2) to evaluate the effect of ablating
PVCs by RFCA from a trans-interatrial septal approach on the LV dilation
and clinical status in symptomatic patients with frequent MA-PVCs
without structural heart disease.