Trends and sex differences in atrial fibrillation hospitalization and catheter ablation at tertiary hospitals in China from 2013 to 2016

BACKGROUND: Catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF) is commonly performed worldwide. However, the clinical characteristics of hospitalized patients with AF and national trends in catheter ablation at tertiary hospitals in China remain unreported. METHODS: This study used the Chinese national database (Hospital Quality Monitoring System) from 2013 to 2016, which is a mandatory database that collects the front page of patients’ medical records for hospital accreditation, to describe the clinical characteristics of patients with AF as an overall cohort and as subgroups divided by catheter ablation and sex. RESULTS: Of 597,919 AF patients first admitted, 57,983 patients underwent catheter ablation [56,384 cases (97.2%) of radiofrequency ablation and 1599 cases (2.8%) of cryoablation] at 746 tertiary hospitals. Nearly 10% of patients hospitalized with AF at tertiary hospitals in China underwent catheter ablation, and the percentage of patients undergoing catheter ablation was on the rise between 2013 and 2016, and the number of cases increased by 2.5 times. Compared with AF patients who did not undergo catheter ablation, those who did were younger, more frequently male, and had fewer baseline comorbidities. Although the overall CHA(2)DS(2)VASc score revealed over half of the patients were high-risk, patients who underwent catheter ablation were mostly low-risk (71.2% of males and 59.1% of females). Considering in-hospital adverse events, the overall pericardial tamponade and all-cause death incidences were 0.2% (0.6% in the ablation group) and 1.2% (0.1% in the ablation group), respectively; both of which were higher in females than males. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, AF patients who underwent catheter ablation were relatively young, had a low thrombosis risk, and had few comorbidities and adverse events. Females were older and experienced more complications than males.