Influence of atrial ultrastructural remodeling on its early mechanical transport following surgery for atrial fibrillation and mitral insufficiency

Methods We enrolled 32 patients operated for severe mitral regurgitation. Half of the patients had no history of AF constituting the SR group. The remaining half had concomitant RFA for longstanding persistent AF, the RFA group. Intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography was used for tissue Doppler indices (TDI) data acquisition at the left atrial (LA) lateral wall. During post-procedural data acquisition all patients were in SR. LA biopsies were obtained during surgery and quantified for fibrosis after Mallory’s trichrome staining.