Physiology-guided cardioneuroablation for vagally mediated syncope and functional bradyarrhythmias

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Abstract
Background: Vagally mediated syncope and functional bradyarrhythmias can cause recurrent symptoms, injury and a need for permanent pacing, yet standard therapies do not address the underlying autonomic reflex. Cardioneuroablation (CNA) targets this mechanism, but adoption has been limited by uncertainty about patient selection, procedural endpoints and durable outcomes. Methods: We studied 95 consecutive patients with vagally mediated syncope (n=78) or functional bradyarrhythmia (n=17) who underwent CNA at a single center by a single lead operator under a uniform, prospectively maintained protocol. Extracardiac vagal stimulation (ECVS) was performed before and after ablation to confirm vagally mediated sinus or atrioventricular (AV) nodal responses and to verify their attenuation. Outcomes through 1 year included clinical recurrence, quality of life, pacing burden and pacemaker extraction. Results: Before ablation, ECVS provoked sinus pauses in 95.8% of patients and AV block in 91.6%; after ablation, sinus pauses were abolished in every patient and residual AV block was present in 4.2%. One-year freedom from recurrent syncope and from bradyarrhythmia-related events was 93.8% and 94.1%. Syncope burden fell from a median of 2.7 episodes per year to none, and disease-specific quality of life improved substantially (P<0.001). Among patients with pre-existing devices, atrial pacing burden fell from a median of 22% to 0%. There were no strokes, deaths or myocardial infarctions. Conclusions: In this single-center cohort, physiology-guided CNA was associated with durable symptom control, improved quality of life and reduced pacing across vagally mediated bradyarrhythmia syndromes. Multicenter controlled studies are needed to confirm these findings.

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