Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Fails to Outperform Sham on Quality of Life
The PVI-SHAM-AF trial presented at ESC 2026 found that ablation reduced AF episodes and burden versus sham, but six-month quality-of-life gains (AFEQT) were not significantly better with ablation, indicating a strong placebo/cardioversion effect and prompting calls for further research before broad adoption of AF ablation.