Dear Colleagues,

Over the last 30 years, catheter ablation has become a safe and effective treatment for cardiac arrhythmias, with many hundreds of thousands of patients treated successfully every year. Since the early days, ablation helped to understand the pathophysiology of arrhythmias and in parallel improved the clinical outcomes. This therapeutic option has therefore substantially changed the management paradigm of cardiac arrhythmias in recent years. Its success has arisen from the development of specific techniques of interventional electrophysiology, together with increasingly sophisticated technologies. Currently, ablation represents the standard of care for several cardiac arrhythmias and incorporates hybrid approaches and new energy sources.

While this therapy is grounded in a knowledge solid base for several arrhythmias, there is still much to learn in regard to complex arrhythmias or clinical scenarios. Specific pathophysiologic and technical aspects require further investigation, as well as the pre-, intra-, and post-procedure management of patients affected by cardiac arrhythmias. This should allow further improvements in both procedural parameters and long-term clinical outcomes.

This special issue welcomes papers reporting original data on both technical and clinical aspects of arrhythmia ablation, as well as systematic reviews and meta-analyses on all aspects of this multifaceted field.

Prof. Roberto De Ponti
Guest Editor