Cardiac perforation during ventricular arrhythmia ablation occurred in only 1% of nearly 900 consecutive patients, a large single-center study found. Over a 12-year period, 11 procedures out of 1,152 in 892 patients were complicated by ventricular perforation, Michifumi Tokuda, MD, and colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, reported. None of the perforations occurred in patients who had undergone prior cardiac surgery. Of those, emergent pericardial drainage and surgical repair were required in 10 and six cases, respectively, according to the study published online in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology.
