Pulmonary Vein Occlusion and Lung Infarction after Radiofrequency Ablation of Atrial Fibrillation.

BACKGROUND

Pulmonary vein (PV) radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is an effective technique for a selected group of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) refractory to antiarrhythmic drugs (Alfudhili et al., 2017). However, pulmonary vein occlusion is a potentially rare, sometimes severe, complication which may present clinically as nonspecific respiratory symptoms, signifying pulmonary vein stenosis, that are often underrecognized or misdiagnosed, leading to progression of the low-grade stenosis to complete occlusion if not treated with timely intervention (Alfudhili et al., 2017). . We report the first case of haemoptysis, three months postradiofrequency ablation (i.e., late complication) secondary to pulmonary vein occlusion that was diagnosed by computed tomography angiogram (CTA), which showed occlusion of 2 out of 4 native pulmonary veins.

CONCLUSION

The cause of haemoptysis in this patient was pulmonary vein occlusion, secondary to radiofrequency ablation, as demonstrated in the CTA.