Occam's razor and the unraveling of atrial fibrillation.

The search for a mechanism to explain atrial fibrillation (AF) has lasted for over a century and continues. Significant progress in understanding this arrhythmia accelerated with the era of operative treatment of this arrhythmia and intensified with the advent of catheter ablation. Through considerable trial and some error, effective "curative" therapies have evolved for paroxysmal AF and are evolving for persistent AF. It is becoming clear that no single mechanism suffices to explain AF in all its forms and multiple mechanisms are playing a role in the most complicated cases.