†These authors contributed equally.
Academic Editors: Matteo Bertini, Bernard Belhassen and Fabian Sanchis-Gomar
Background: Alcohol septal ablation (ASA) has been more commonly
applied in medical refractory hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM)
compared with septal myectomy (SM), however its potential to create a
proarrhythmic substrate is increased. Methods: A systematic search was
performed in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library from
inception to October 2020. Fixed or random effects models were used to estimate
the risk ratios (RR) for ventricular arrhythmia events or other outcomes between
the SM and ASA cohorts. Results: Twenty studies with 8025 patients were
included. Pool analysis showed that the incidence of ventricular tachycardia
(VT)/ventricular fibrillation (VF), which included appropriate implantable
cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) intervention, was significantly higher in the
ASA cohort than that in the SM cohort (ASA vs SM: 10% (345/3312) vs 5%
(161/3227) (RR = 1.98, 95% CI (confidence interval), 1.65–2.37; p
