Evidence Scoring system
Only observational studies (OS), propensity scored (PS) studies, randomized controlled trials (RCT), and meta-analysis (MA) of ablation strategies for PAF and non-PAF were included. OS, PS and MA were excluded if there was no PVI only control group for comparison. For the meta-analyses, only the largest and/or latest published were included.
A positive score favors technique implementation, while a negative score indicates that there are no additional benefits with the approach. AF evidence-based scores were calculated by considering the different weights of the studies, as described below.