Reply to García-Villarreal et al.

We also found that there appears to be an ablation "dose-response" in achieving return to sinus rhythm, with the greatest step-up achieved when the left atrial lesion set includes the mitral isthmus lesion. Keywords: Arrhythmia; Cardiac surgery; Ablation; 5-Year follow-up EN Arrhythmia Cardiac surgery Ablation 5-Year follow-up 1 1 1 02/07/23 20230101 NES 230101 We thank Dr Garcia-Villarreal [[1]] for his comment on our article in which he questions the rate of return to stable sinus rhythm in the Amaze trial [[2]]. We therefore agree with Dr Garcia-Villarreal that concomitant atrial fibrillation surgery should ideally be as complete as possible, and there may be an argument for concentrating such surgery in the hands of interested and experienced surgeons. [Extracted from the article]