Intracardiac echocardiography-guided left atrial appendage occlusion: descriptive analysis

Introduction Oral anticoagulants are the standard treatment for prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). However, some patients still have stroke despite anticoagulation or have contraindications to anticoagulation. The left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) is an option for those patients. The use of intracardiac echocardiography (ICE) instead of Transesophageal echocardiography guiding LAAO procedures has increased, allowing to reduce the use of general anesthesia. Objectives The aim of this study is to describe data regarding safety and efficacy in patients submitted to ICE-guided LAAO. Methods In a tertiary center, patients submitted to ICE-guided LAAO were identified. Information regarding baseline characteristics, procedure technical success, complications, hospitalization and follow-up data was noted retrospectively. The registered stroke and bleeding rates were compared with predicted rates using CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED scores, respectively. Results 45 patients underwent ICE-guided LAAO, mean age 75.5±9.6 years old, 71.1% male (detailed characteristics in table 1). Permanent AF was present in 68.9% (n=31), with average CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED scores of 4.0±1.4 and 3.6±1.1, respectively (predicting a stroke risk of 4.0% per year and a major bleeding risk of 8.7% per year). The LAAO indication was previous major bleeding in 64.4% (n=29), high bleeding risk in 24.4% (n=11) and embolic events despite therapeutic anticoagulation in 11.1% (n=5). The LAAO devices were implanted successfully in 96% of the patients (n=43). It was noted a complication rate of 8.8% (n=4), perforation in 4.4% (n=2), device embolization in 4.4% (n=2, one of them leading to cardiac arrest and death) and no major vascular complications occurred. No other procedure-related deaths occurred. The average duration of hospitalization after the procedure was 5.7 days. All patients were followed-up for a mean period of 19.0 months. During that period, another death (2.2%) occurred with a non-cardiac cause and the re-hospitalization rate was 26.7% (n=12), 11.1% (n=5) for cardiac causes. During the same period, 1 stroke (2.2%) and 6 major bleeding (13.3%) occurred – yearly rates of 1.4% and 8.4%, respectively. The stroke rate is markedly inferior to predicted by the score and the major bleeding is slightly inferior to predicted. Conclusions This study provides data about the safety and mainly about the efficacy of the LAAO guided by ICE in a cohort of patients with high hemorrhagic and embolic risk. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.