The Indispensable Role of Sham Controls in Evaluating Interventional Therapies: The Need for Objective Rigor in Atrial Fibrillation Ablation

The evaluation of interventional therapies for atrial fibrillation (AF) has reached a critical methodological crossroads. With the recent publications of sham-controlled trials for AF ablation1,2 there has been debate within the electrophysiology community regarding the necessity, validity, and ethics of such trial designs for a matured therapy with measurable benefit in arrhythmia burden (Figure 1).

Published in Heart Rhythm. The abstract is shown as published and remains the work of its authors; read the full article at the source.

doi.org/10.1016/j.hrthm.2026.10.001