Focal pulsed field ablation (PFA) is a novel technique for treating cardiac arrhythmias. It has demonstrated positive results in initial studies and has a good safety profile. In recent studies, PFA was often utilized for first-time pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) and was performed under general anesthesia. In our study, we assessed the feasibility, safety, acute procedural efficacy, and efficiency of focal PFA under deep sedation in patients, 80% of whom had undergone at least one left atrial ablation previously. We treated 30 patients (71 ± 7, 46% male) using the CENTAURI system for various atrial arrhythmias, including atrial fibrillation, typical and atypical atrial flutter, and focal atrial tachycardia. The average procedure and fluoroscopy times were 122 ± 43 min and 9 ± 7 min, respectively. A total of 83.33% of patients received additional line ablations beyond PVI, specifically targeting the posterior box and anterior mitral line. All ablations were successfully performed in deep sedation with only one major and one minor complication observed. The major complication was a vasospasm of the right coronary artery during ablation of the cavotricuspid isthmus, which was treated successfully with intracoronary nitroglycerin. All patients could be discharged in sinus rhythm. Moreover, adenosine appears effective in identifying dormant conduction in some patients after focal PFA. In conclusion, focal PFA is an effective approach for complex left atrial ablations under deep sedation, offering both high efficacy and efficiency with a reliable safety profile. Studies on long-term outcomes are needed.

Background: mitral regurgitation (mr) is the most common valvular heart disease (vhd) in the elderly and tends to be more prevalent in women. while relevant sex differences in outcomes are evident in surgically treated collectives, there are very limited and conflicting sex-specific data for the growing cohort of patients undergoing transcatheter edge-to-edge repair (teer). Objective: to investigate whether sex impacts procedural safety and efficacy, and in-hospital- and long-term outcomes, after teer for mr. Methods: in a multicenter observational cohort study, patients who underwent teer were stratified by sex and relevant outcome measures, and analyzed using multivariable cox regression and propensity score matching (psm). Results: a total of 821 patients were analyzed, of whom 37.4% (307/821) were female. compared to male patients, females were significantly older (77 ± 8.5 vs. 80.4 ± 6.7 years, p = 0.03), and had less coronary artery disease (cad, 67.7% vs. 53.1%, p < 0.0001) and a higher proportion of preserved left ventricular function (lvef > 50%, 32.5% vs. 50.5%, p > 0.0001). safety and efficacy of the teer procedure and in-hospital mortality did not differ between the sexes. after psm, women showed significantly better survival 3 years after teer compared to men (60.7% vs. 54.2%, p = 0.04) and a lower risk of all-cause death according to multiple cox regression (hr 0.8, 95% ci 0.6–0.9, p = 0.02). after sex-specific stratification for concomitant atrial fibrillation (af), the most common comorbidity in the present collective, women with af experience significantly worse adjusted survival compared to women without af (53.9% vs. 75.1%, p = 0.042) three years after teer and lose the survival advantage over men. Conclusions: female patients are older and less comorbid than males undergoing TEER. The TEER procedure is equally safe and effective in both sexes. While in-hospital mortality did not differ, female patients experienced a significantly better adjusted long-term survival compared to male patients. Concomitant AF offsets the prognostic advantage of females over males and, in contrast to males, significantly impairs long-term survival in women undergoing TEER. Further research is warranted to elucidate underlying causes for the observed sex disparities and to develop sex-tailored treatment recommendations.